


The Sweeter Things in Life...

by TeaFourTwo



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Artist Steve Rogers, Body Dysphoria, Bottom Steve Rogers, Captain America Steve Rogers/Modern Bucky Barnes, Catholic Steve Rogers, Dissociation, Gay Steve Rogers, Internalized Homophobia, Jewish Bucky Barnes, Kinda, M/M, Non-Serum Steve Rogers/Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes | Shrinkyclinks, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-World War II Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Rectal Dilators, Reincarnation, Russian Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers Feels, Sugar Daddy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:42:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 58,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25697503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeaFourTwo/pseuds/TeaFourTwo
Summary: In a hundred different worlds Steve Rogers grows up with a strong and healthy boy at his sickbed, in a hundred different timelines that boy cares for him, stands by him, loves him…until the end of the line.This is not that timeline. This is not that world.In this world, in this time, Steve Grant Rogers grows up without a James Buchanan Barnes.Somehow, they find their way to each other anyways.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 77
Kudos: 139





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I've been reaaally into Stucky fic lately...and I just couldn't get over how little Sugar Daddy fic there is in the pairing. So I made one myself! I'm really excited to post this fic honestly because it's FINISHED. It's around 50k, though I'm not sure how I'm going to cut up the chapters yet so I'll update the number of chapters later once I'm sure. I'll be posting every week I think, though maybe faster!
> 
> WARNINGS: I have used period typical language, including racial slurs and homophobic language and attitudes. I know this isn't everyone's cup of tea, and I am in no way condoning the use of such language nor do I think it's acceptable. Things were different back then though, and I think it's important to acknowledge that in all it's ugliness without sugar-coating it.
> 
> *on the note of this being Shrinkeyclinks, I don't want to spoil anything but if after a few chapters yous guys think it shouldn't be tagged let me know...

**1936**

_Pickett’s Pawn Shop, Brooklyn, NY_

In a hundred different worlds Steve Rogers grows up with a strong and healthy boy at his sickbed, in a hundred different timelines that boy cares for him, stands by him, loves him…until the end of the line.

This is not that timeline. This is not that world.

In this world, in this time, Steve Grant Rogers grows up without a James Buchanan Barnes.

He grows up alone with only his mother and her friends for company, separated from his peers by sickness and a propensity to cause a bit too much trouble to be worth hanging around. There is no Bucky to soothe over hurt feelings and blackened eyes, and there is no Bucky to tell the meaner kids to lay off his friend, and so Steve stays in his little room and watches the world go by outside without him. That is, until he’s seventeen and an orphan and the world suddenly comes to him, whether he likes it or not.

For some time he struggles to make ends meet, to pull himself up out of poverty and find his feet in this new and unfamiliar world that suddenly sees him as an adult. He only makes it two months before he has to start selling his mother’s jewelry. By the end of the year, he only has one thing of hers left...the ring her mother had passed down to her for her marriage. A pretty thing made of solid gold, the only thing of worth her family ever had to pass down, molded in the shape of a traditional Claddagh ring with a ruby heart.

“Tough it up, Rogers, you’ve had it worse than this,” Steve tells himself, and it’s not a total lie though it feels like one at the moment.

He reminds himself that his body isn't trying to kill him, no more than usual anyways, and he doesn’t have no broken bones or black eyes to contend with. This is nothing compared to that winter he’d had double pneumonia and his ma had nearly lost her job nursing him, and it’s nothing compared to the dark awful day that he’d come home and found her dead in her bed, still and cold and incapable of nursing him ever again.

He struggles against the threat of tears, presses the heels of his palms into his eye sockets, and takes as deep a breath as his godforsaken lungs will allow.

When he feels like he’s composed himself, Steve blinks his eyes open once more to stare down at the measly ten dollars in his wallet, the only money he has left from his sign painting job. It’s not enough to cover the rent, not even close. He hasn’t had any real sort of job full time job for months, and his sign painting jobs had been few and far between, likely because money's tough to come by right now even for the well off. He’s on his own now, no Sarah Rogers to tut at him and tell him _‘never you mind about that, Stevie, let your dear ol' ma handle the bills.’_

The gold ring that once belonged to said Sarah Rogers glints in the palm of his hand and feels near to the edge of crying again.

 _I’m sorry, ma,_ he thinks to himself as he pockets the ring. _I’ll buy it back, I promise._

Then he sets his shoulders and squares his jaw and heads inside the pawnshop.

—

**2011**

_SHIELD Headquarters, Manhatten, NY_

“You’ve been asleep for 70 years.”

The words haven’t left Captain Steven Grant Roger’s brain since Director Fury said them, playing on repeat like that terrible 1941 Dodger’s game he’d woke up to. They tell him it’s 2011, that they won the war, that SHIELD, an organization started by Peggy Carter, found him in the arctic and _defrosted him_ like a turkey taken from the icebox the day before Thanksgiving.

It takes him a week to stop hearing those words whispered in his mind every second he’s awake, and then another week before it actually settles in his mind as truth and the world gains a bit more _solidity_. Everything had seemed so unreal when he woke up, faced with a place that was so clearly fake and pinging every one of his alarm bells. He’d thought Hydra had survived the death of Schmidt and found him, or if not, maybe the Nazis.

Sometimes he’ll blink and suddenly he’s second-guessing everything, thinking _maybe I'm still under that ice, maybe this is all a dream,_ Or, even worse, _maybe this really is all some elaborate trick that I've fallen for, and one day I'll wake up to find someone whispering 'Hail Hydra' into my ear when they finally decide to kill me._

He’ll always come back to himself though, remind himself of that strange futuristic city he’d run out in the middle of. Remind himself of all the proof they've given him that he really is in the future, that he really is in New York. No one could fake that level of technology, that expansive a world of blinding lights and noise. It’s usually enough to make him believe what he sees is real, that he really is in the 21st century.

Usually.

They tell him he’ll be staying at their training facility for the time being, just until he’s adjusted to his new surroundings enough to move out. Captain Rogers doesn’t mind, finds the small cube-like room they give him comforting even, for how similar it is to his tent from the war. Simple, small, clean, filled only with the barest of necessities. It’s modern enough though that it helps remind him where he is when he wakes gasping and confused, stuck in a different time in his head.

Agent Robinson, who he finds out is the name of the woman he’d woken up to in that false 1940’s room, is assigned to teach him the basics of the 21st century. She seems less than enthused to be doing so, nervous and seemingly a little embarrassed to have been caught out on her lie so quickly. So Captain Rogers tries to do what he does best and put her at ease.

“You certainly look more comfortable now, ma’am.” Is what Rogers says to her with a gentle smile to tell her all's forgiven. He knows she was only doing her job, even if he's still rather upset that they'd tried to play games instead of just telling it to him straight.

"More comfortable?"

“In your own clothes, I mean.”

“Oh! Yes, well, I don’t know how women got any work done in those things, to be honest.” She says with a laugh, smoothing a hand down her dress slacks. “I can’t imagine running in those heels, or that _skirt.”_

And Captain Rogers laughs with her, even though he’s thinking of Peggy and her perfect hair and lipstick, her pants suits and her effortless poise in any size heels. He wonders if she'd hated them, wonders if he'll ever get a chance to ask her, or if he even wants to see her that way—old from a life well-lived without him.

“But well, I suppose I can admit that at least I looked good, like a _real classy dame_. That's what they used to say, isn't it?”

And again he laughs, even though he’s thinking of how too short her skirt had been and how she clearly how her shirt had been too thin with no slip under it so he could see the line of her strange shaped brassiere. She hadn’t had any sort of jacket over it to match the skirt either, and her legs had been bare of stockings in a way dames hadn’t even done during the worst of the war shortages.

She hadn’t looked good, she hadn’t looked _classy._ Open her shirt a bit more and she’d have looked like some harlot down by the docks.

Instantly he feels shame hit him square in the chest for thinking such things about a woman that’s clearly only doing her best to help him. That's not the sort of thoughts a good man has, he tells himself, that's not the kind of thoughts _Captain America_ has.

He makes sure to be extra polite and kind to Agent Robinson for the rest of the day, even buying her a coffee with the card SHIELD had given him. They make it a weekly occurrence, and slowly he sees her begin to relax around him. He doesn't necessarily care for her, but it's better if she doesn't act like a robot around him considering she's the only person he has any regular contact with outside of Fury.

Through these talks, he begins to get a picture of how people of the 21st century view the America he'd grown up with.

Sometimes she talked of itdisparagingly.

“I suppose it really puts life into perspective doesn’t it? Makes me realize I shouldn’t complain about having to wear slacks instead of jeans.” Agent Robinson says over coffee that day, “What I mean is, I don’t have it so bad compared to how woman had it in your time, Captain...I’m sure it’s been quite an adjustment for you, seeing so many women working in jobs they never would have before.”

As if he’d ever had anything but respect for Peggy, the best agent he’d ever known, male or female. As if he’d cared more than to know if he should say ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am’.’ He knows too that it's a test, to see if he's adjusting to the new social norms of this century, after the sensitivity course they'd put him through.

"Of course, it's different." He settles on. "For the better, in many ways."

“There were some good things back then though.” Agent Robinson says with a laugh as she looks around the cafeteria. When he follows her gaze he just sees people going about their day, but it’s clearly not what Agent Robinsons sees since she wrinkles her nose. “People actually talked to one another. No smartphones stuck in their faces, no social media, no _distractions._ ”

“Oh I don’t know.” Captain Rogers says with a tight grin. “It’s not so different from a newspaper really. People have always found ways to avoid talking to each other I think.”

"Things were simpler then, though, you have to admit."

_Yes, 'simpler.' Also known as 'too broke to do anything except sit around on the stoop on the few days you didn't have to work yourself into exhaustion to make rent.'_

"In some ways." Is all he says with a smile because if he doesn't smile he may say something he'll regret. 

Well. He certainly isn't broke anymore, that's for sure—one of the main reasons he insists on always paying for Agent Robinson's coffee. He'd seen the amount of money in his SHIELD given bank account only once, and he'd refused to look at the balance again just in case it made him have a panic attack. He's never seen that many zeros in his life, not even when he'd been at his most financially stable during those years with—

Agent Robinson gives an alarmed little yelp when the ceramic coffee cup in his hand cracks, sending hot black coffee all over his hand and the table.

"I'm so sorry—" He rushes to say, trying to clean it up even as Agent Robinson is trying to tell him to go to medical to get his bleeding hand looked at. "There's no need, it'll heal soon enough."

"That doesn't mean you shouldn't go and get it wrapped! Please, Steve, jus—"

"Captain Rogers." He says sharply, making her flinch away from him. He takes a deep breath. "Sorry. Just. I don't think we're familiar enough for first names, are we?"

"N-no, of course not." She stutters, looking red-faced and nervous again. Rogers curses under his breath as she gets up with the excuse of getting more napkins, and he knows then that he's ruined any work he'd done to get her to relax.

It’s just that he’s so _angry_ all the time, angry that the world has changed so much and left him behind, angry at how everyone expects him to adjust so fast, to take everything that’s changed in stride and _thank_ them for it. Angry at how everyone either looks at him like some old relic of the past or a particularly interesting fossil to inspect, angry that everyone is so happy to tell him how the future is better than the past but so hesitant to talk about how it's worse.

But most of all, he's angry at the knowledge that even if the war is over…he’ll never get to go home.

—

Captain Rogers tries his best to put aside his baseless pointless anger. Mostly by punching sandbags until they explode and smiling and nodding through every conversation he doesn’t understand.

Everyone tells him he’s come home, that he’s safe and the war is over…but this isn’t home. This isn’t his New York. Captain Rogers is a soldier with no war to fight in.

Still, he tries. He learns to use microwaves that heat food up in the blink of an eye and thinks of army rations eaten cold or spam that’s been burnt by Dum Dum over a campfire. He drinks coke's that taste too sweet, and food that's full of unfamiliar spices and strange textures. He takes showers in a bathroom that they apologize to him for being ‘small,’ all the while thinking of how he’d grown up in buildings that had one communal bath for the whole building and had been half the size of this one besides.

He thinks of how hard it was during the war to get used to sleeping on the ground, and how hard it is now to get used to the softness of the beds here. He thinks of how lucky everyone is now to have all these _things_ to make their lives easier, and how they think nothing of them, take them for granted and then complain about wanting more. He thinks of growing up, how down on his luck he’d been just trying to make ends meet in a world that didn’t care to give a helping hand to the weak and small.

He thinks of _Stevie,_ that little kid from Brooklyn that never knew when to give up, who always got back up and made the best of things no matter how hard it got. He stares into the bathroom mirror blank-eyed, and wonders where that kid went; whether he'll ever find him under Captain America's shield and mask again.

When he comes back to himself there’s blood on his hand and the broken mirror in front of him. His knuckles are smooth and unblemished in minutes, but there's no hiding the broken mirror, and Rogers is terrible at lying anyways.

SHIELD starts sending him to a therapist after that, and Captain Rogers learns to fake his smiles a bit better and keep his punches to reinforced sandbags.

—

Sometimes he’s still not sure what’s real and what’s not in this new world, whether he’s going to wake up one day and realize he’s just in another bigger, more elaborate box SHIELD has created around him. Every time that edge of distrust in the world around him creeps up on him though, he puts a hat on and leaves the training compound and walks the streets of New York—something his _therapist_ suggested.

As much as he hates to admit it, his therapist does have some good ideas sometimes. It helps, to be surrounded by a world that he knows can’t possibly be manufactured.

 _Too many people all around him to be agents,_ his mind tells him, _too many buildings to create from plaster and drywall._

It gets easier when, at the end of his second month at SHIELD’s training facility, he’s suddenly being tasked with joining a new team and saving New York again—this time not from bombs but real live _aliens._

Not that he’s complaining. It’s almost nice, to be given something else to focus on besides just how lost he felt in this new century. He feels like he has a purpose again, a war to fight against an enemy whose goals are terribly familiar and alien at the same time. _Literally_ alien.

It’s exactly what he needs, as shameful as it is to admit that the world nearly being enslaved and New York nearly being razed had actually _helped_ him. It’s proof that he’s still needed here, in this time, that he’s still _useful._ It’s certainly an eye-opening experience though, being thrown headlong into a world he no longer understands, captaining a team of people with such different backgrounds from him.

There’s Tony Stark, so similar but so different than Howard was. Even with all their differences, it's still a knife in his chest every time he sees him. They get off to a rocky start, but by the end, Rogers learns to see through his armor of caustic humor enough to see a good man at his core and admire the work he’s done to change the Stark name away from being associated with weapons and death.

Bruce Banner is smart and humble in a way that reminds him of Dr. Erskine, a similarity that’s only compounded by the fact he’d tried and failed to replicate the serum that had made Steve into Captain America. He’s a nice enough guy, if a bit standoffish and disinterested in working together until it was almost too late.

Thor had been…well, it’d certainly been interesting to meet a so-called _god of thunder_ and realize a large chunk of human mythology is based off of _aliens_. It does put things into perspective and even makes him briefly wonder if maybe Jesus had been an alien too, with all his supposed miracles being Asgardian magic. That usually led to spiraling thoughts of anxiety and crippling doubt though, so he tries not to think on it too long. Rogers can’t help but think how strange it is to fight side by side with someone people had _worshiped_ hundreds of years ago. He wonders in his down moments if people flock to worship him again now that they know he's _real,_ or if the knowledge he's flesh and blood makes him harder to see as a real _god._ Despite Thor's familial issues being the root of all their alien problems, it’s nice not to be the oldest man in the room with him around.

He doesn’t know much about Clint Barton. Admittedly, he hadn’t gotten much of a chance to get to know him, considering he was brainwashed for half their acquaintance, but he’s a sharp enough shot that Rogers feels safer to have him at his back. It fills a hole in his armor to have someone watching his six, a feeling of rightness like there should have been someone there all along. It’s not a new feeling, but he tries not to dwell too much on it anyways.

Then there’s Natasha Romanov. A spy, and a good one at that. She’s got a better poker face than even Peggy’d had, Rogers can’t help but admit, and it takes him a while to get a read on the kind of person she is. She comes in all wit and charm, but he sees the way she looks at people when she thinks they’re not looking, sharp and analyzing. He wonders how much of her personality is real, how much of it is fake. He wonders if even she knows.

They struggle to find a way to fit together, and it’s to Rogers' own regret that it takes the death of one Phil Coulson to do it. He’d liked Phil, even if being around him made him feel a bit like a walking museum to be gawked at. It’d been nice in some ways though, to see living proof that his actions had impacted the world in some way, that he’d inspired others to do good.

Despite everything it’d taken to get them to work as a real _team,_ it seems easy enough for all of them to go their separate ways once the battle is over. It’s a team so far away from what the Howling Commandos were that it makes Rogers' heart ache. He misses sleeping in a group on the ground, ribbing one another around the campfire, the sense of familiarity and camaraderie that could only come from being in constant contact over an extended period of time. Being alone again, bereft of any sort of plan of action or goal, it only hammers home everything he’s lost all over again. It's why he makes the decision he does after the battle for New York is over and done with easier.

After, Director Fury tells him to get out of dodge for a while until the situation cools down in New York. He doesn't know the whole story, but he knows enough from the news that there's a lot of push back on whether the Avengers had helped or hurt things for the city. _Politics,_ Rogers thinks with disdain, and remembers the secret weapons Fury had hidden from him because of said 'politics.' Once again doubt creeps in on whether staying with SHIELD is the right move...but then what other choice does he have? What else can Captain America be, if he's not a soldier?

Whatever his doubts, Rogers understands the game that is keeping a low profile when in the hot seat with 'upper management.' And so, as much as he hates playing it, he buys a bike, tells the Director he’s going on a road trip to see the country he’s lived and died for.

He’s lying.

—

Natasha, code name Black Widow, is the one who finds him, which Captain Rogers isn’t surprised at. She’s the only one out of the team that calls him ‘Steve,’ and she says it in a purposeful way every time, as if she knows how few people call him by his real name, as if she knows even he doesn’t even call himself that anymore.

“You’ll be recognized in less than five hours, looking like that.” She says, walking up behind him with two coffees. If not for her voice Rogers thinks he might not even have recognized _her_ , in her cute sundress, curly hair, and bright pink lipstick. “A hat and sunglasses. Really? If you call that a disguise to my face I may actually punch you. You would make a terrible spy.”

“I suppose it’s a good thing I’m not a spy then, isn’t it?” He says with a quirk of his eyebrow. “Besides, I’ve been helping with clean up all day now and no one’s noticed.”

“Only because I’ve been keeping reporters away from every part of the city you’ve been in, and paying off the people who are observant enough to recognize you,” Natasha says dully, then she shoves her extra coffee into Steve’s hands before he can move away to start working again. “Follow me.”

“What?” He says, staring dumbly at the coffee in his hands. “But I—“

“Look, super soldier,” She says, patting his cheek, “As fun as it is to give paparazzi the runaround, I don't have time to run interference forever, so if you don’t want cameramen and reporters swarming that awful little hotel you’ve been staying in—not to mention every cleanup sight you show up at—then you’ll _follow me._ ”

Captain Rogers follows her, trusting Natasha not to drag him back to SHIELD headquarters despite himself.

She takes him into a secluded alley and hands him what looks like a dead rat. “Hat off. Wig on.”

He can’t help but laugh a bit because the wig honestly looks like something not even the most desperate bald men would wear back in the day. But, he does as she says, because he finds he rather likes Natasha. Out of everyone on the hastily put together team they’d named the Avengers, he thinks she’s his favorite. He likes how straight forward and no-nonsense she is—when she and isn’t trying to get something out of you anyways.

She reminds him sometimes almost painfully of someone he used to know, back before he—

Rogers clears his head with a firm pat of the wig now covering his blonde hair, trying to root himself in the present. It does him no good to get lost in old memories of who he used to be. Besides, he’s sure that woman is long dead by now. She’d been old even back then, after all.

Natasha fixes the wig to her liking and then pulls a strange mesh-like thing from her bag. “This is a photostatic veil. It’s still a prototype so don’t be going around telling Stark about it. He’ll have an aneurysm if he finds out we’re hiding tech like this on him.”

She helps him situate it on his face, and it feels strangely gel-like for what seems to be tiny interwoven metal balls. It makes his skin go a bit numb, and his tongue tingle. When Natasha pulls him out of the alley and Rogers gets the chance to look at his reflection in a passing window he’s shocked to find he doesn’t even recognize himself.

For a moment he’s lurched violently into the past, just after the successful procedure that’d given him the serum. Steve looking in a mirror, hit by an uneasy sensation of disconnect when he sees his own reflection, a feeling of _that’s not me, that’s not my reflection, not my body—_

Rogers grits his teeth, snapping his eyes away from his reflection in the window. Natasha’s looking at him from the corner of her eye, and he knows she must have noticed his momentary lapse of weakness. She always notices.

“We’re going to Brooklyn?” He asks in surprise as they step on to the C train headed southbound. Natasha doesn’t answer, of course, just pulls out her phone and starts tapping away at it like everyone seems so keen to do this century. Rogers sighs heavily and pulls out the Stark phone Tony had pushed on him after the battle.

The ride is not as long as he remembers it being, but it’s just as crowded and cramped. He’s sure all the repairs and reconstruction around the city hasn’t helped with that either, since it’s closed down several of the metro stops in Manhattan. Everyone looks haggard and harried, and Rogers wonders how many of them lost people during the attacks, lost _loved ones._

 _Because I couldn’t save them._ That little voice that still goes by _Steve_ in his head says. Captain Rogers learned long ago that such thoughts do no one any good, even as he knows he will always feel guilt for those he couldn't save. There's no point wallowing in grief and guilt, not when it just distracted him from doing what he could to help in the now. Like helping with the clean up of the city...something which he isn't doing now, if only because of Natasha.

“You can stop pretending you’re doing something important on that phone of yours.” Natasha says, popping some of the gum in her mouth, “This is our stop.”

Natasha makes a fast exit, taking him in a seemingly random direction as Rogers struggles to both keep up and take in everything around him at the same time. This is the first time he’s been in Brooklyn since…since 1941. He hadn’t gone far from the SHIELD base after waking up, in part because Fury had _suggested_ he shouldn’t until he became more acclimated to the future— _present,_ he reminds himself.

He steps out, takes it all in. If he closes his eyes and just listens to the whir of cars and the honking of horns, to the chatter of people and the call of street vendors, the sounds of it all are so close to what they’d used to be…

It’s almost enough to make him feel like he’s home, _almost…_ but then he opens his eyes and sees the buildings so much taller than they ever were in his day, see’s the people dressed in clothes that would’ve gotten them arrested for public indecency, see’s cars that are sleek and colorful and nothing like what he’d expected future cars to look like.

“We’re getting on _another_ train?” Rogers sighs as follows dutifully behind Natasha and sees’s the sign for the crosstown local train pass above their heads. “Natasha just—enough of this. Where are you taking me?”

He says it in the same tone he uses in the field, that commanding edge that is his _Captain America_ voice. It makes most people he uses it on stand a little straighter, look him in the eye, maybe sweat a little as they answer him, terrified of disappointing him, of disobeying a direct order from _him_ of all people.

Natasha is clearly not most people, since she just blinks, blows her gum long and steady as she holds his eye until it pops obnoxiously loud and Rogers flinches.

“Get on the train, Steve.”

He gets on the train with a defeated sigh, taking his phone out once more and trying to distract himself with one of the vapid apps that Tony had insisted he use. Captain Rogers has to admit if only to himself, that it is helpful. He’d never say that to Tony though, considering how obnoxious he’d been when giving it to him.

_“It’s an amazing teaching tool, Cap. Really, just fantastic. I’m shocked, no, furious, that I didn’t think of it myself—wait. What am I saying, I did think of it—during that one boring board meeting—don’t ask me which, they’re all boring. Well, anyway, you should use it. Makes all this 'gosh darn new-fangled technology' easy to understand for...people, of all ages. Y'know, toddlers, babies, teenagers, 90-year-old science experiments with a stick up their ass—”_

_“Thank you, Tony. It looks…interesting.”_ Rogers had said diplomatically, and then, just to mess with him, had asked. _“Just one question. How do I delete apps again?”_

The look on his face…Ste—Rogers almost smiles to remember it. Yeah. Definitely not telling Tony he likes his app. He’d never live it down.

> _> Seventh Avenue<< _The computerized voice announces, and then Natasha gets up and stands by the doors until they open. A sinking feeling starts to grip the Captain's stomach as they leave the station, and familiar victorian brownstones appear. He tries not to look at them too closely, searching for one in particular that he both does and doesn’t want to find. As they walk up into the area of Park Slope Rogers recognizes that looks better off than it did during the depression, though really it hadn't been so down on its luck as other parts of Brooklyn even then.

Tense, he watches Natasha as she turns in a circle to reorient herself and decide their next course to a location only she knows. And yet, when she turns right and heads towards the park, Rogers has a sudden overwhelming feeling of dread that he _knows_ where they’re going. But he can’t—he can’t think of that. She can’t possibly be taking him where he thinks they’re going—that’s not. No one knows about—

His mind goes a little fuzzy and distant as they walk along. Minutes pass, or maybe hours, he doesn’t know. All he knows is that when they finally stop, in front of a gorgeous dark red stone facade his heart is beating faster than it had while fighting goddamn _aliens._

Steve stands at the foot of the stairs looking up at the building’s facade with awe. Not Rogers, but _Steve_ as he was before the serum, small and boney and all nerves, his old beat-up folio bag thrown over his shoulder, carrying the first painting he ever did by private commission. Steve turns and looks at Rogers, and the ghost of his past self looking through him makes him shiver.

 _“Natasha…”_ He says wearily, looking away from the steps and their ghosts. Natasha doesn’t acknowledge him, just walks up the sweeping stairs to the front door and _unlocks it._ The squeak of the door is just as bad as he remembers, if not worse.

He looks up, and there _he_ is, with a bright smile and creased eyes that have seen too much.

_Steve. You came. I’d almost convinced myself you wouldn’t—_

“—come on, Steve.” Natasha says over her shoulder, interrupting the whispers of old memories, and Ste—Rogers is helpless but to comply. The serum should ensure he can run three marathons without getting tired, and yet here he's standing after a short walk through Brooklyn with shaky unstable legs.

Inside it’s brightly lit with an ornate chandelier, and everything is…is so close to how he remembers it. The furniture is covered by white sheets and the walls are painted instead of lined with art nouveau era wallpaper, but everything else...it's like he's just walked into the past.

Natasha turns to look at him, but he doesn’t see her. He’s too busy drifting through memories, seeing ghosts in every corner.

 _—I’m sure it’ll be beautiful_ _because_ _of the subject matter..._

_...We can stop whenever you want to, Steve..._

_...Everything ends, motek sheli…_

_...But what do you really want, Steve?_

_…Steve...doll_ _...Steve...motek_ _…Stevie!—_

“—Steve?”

With a shuddering breath, Ste—Capta— _Rogers_ gets his emotions, and his ghosts, back in the pretty little box he’s so used to stuffing them in. He blinks rapidly at Natasha, who’s looking at him with a strange expression. His eyes drift down to the very _real_ box she’s holding in her hands.

“What are we…what are we doing here, Natasha?” He manages to get out of his raw throat.

“Moving you in.” She says plainly. “You can’t stay in that awful bunker in the training facility forever, and you certainly can’t stay in that overpriced hotel you think is so inconspicuous.”

“But I—"

“Steve, you need a place of your own.” Natasha interrupts. “And this...this _was_ your home, wasn't it?”

The word _home_ , obviously picked on purpose over _house,_ hit him like a steel ball to the chest. He shakes his head, “No. No it’s not mine anymore—it was supposed to be returned to…”

Swallowing painfully, he stumbles over the name he means to say and looks away from Natasha’s sharp eyes. “…to the original owners’ family, after I died.”

“Well. You don’t look dead to me.”

He gives her his best _don’t be smart with me_ look, which doesn’t phase her in the least.

  
“What happened to the people that were living here?” He says firmly, grasping at the possible out. “I don’t care if I _have_ come back from the dead, it’s their home and they should keep it.”

“No one was living here, Steve, it’d passed into the bank’s hands by the time you woke up.”

It’s hard to hear, knowing that it means _his_ line ended, and with no descendants to pass it down to it was turned over to the bank to be sold. Natasha comes closer, setting her little black box on the table as she goes. She looks up at him, and he’s sharply reminded of how small she is compared to him. He feels a sense of vertigo, standing in this place where he’d only ever been small and thin, and for a moment it's not Natasha standing in front of him but an old woman with a thick accent and a sharp tongue and sharper eyes. The sudden realization of how tall he is makes it feel as if the walls are closing in on him, makes the ceiling feel like it’s falling atop his head.

He has to shake himself out of the memory, remind himself that he's in 2011, that it's Natasha standing before him and not some long-dead ghost. He turns to try and get his bearings, but it only makes it worse when he sees the painting leaning against the wall. The sight of grey eyes and a crooked grin, of a man he desperately tries never to think of, knocks the breath right out of him.

"Someone you know?" Natasha says in that tone of voice that doesn't quite hide the fact that she already knows the answer.

“How did you even find out about this place?” He asks breathlessly to avoid answering. It's a legitimate question, but by the insulted look she gives him it’s also a stupid one.

“Steve.” Natasha says calmly. “Sit.”

For a moment that obstinate part of him wants to stay standing just to spite her, but the little white spots that dance his vision make him pulls a sheet off of a chair and sit in it, focusing on his breathing. It feels better to look up at her than down, centers him more in his own body. He puts his back to the painting leaning against the wall, one he'd done himself and signed under one _Grant Stephens._

“I’ve been watching you, since you woke up and Fury told me his intentions for you to head the Avengers project, trying to figure out what kind of man you are—your strengths, your weaknesses.” Natasha tilts her head, looking down at him, “Don’t take it personally, I did it for everyone.”

It only rankles a little to know she’d been spying on him. After all, he has a feeling she wouldn’t have been the only one, and it makes sense she’d want to know more about the man who would be leading the team she’d be on.

“The perfect soldier. The ideal man. That’s what they all said, the newsreels and the posters and the politicians. But propaganda isn’t truth to anyone but fools and children, and I am neither.” She pauses, “So I watched you. Watched to see for myself what kind of man you were behind the myth. What kind of man would I be letting point my gun?”

“…and what did you decide? What kind of man am I?” He says blankly, hardly a question at all.

“The mythical kind.” She moves to sit beside him, spinning the little box in front of her. Rogers looks at it with dark curious eyes. “No man can be that _good_ all the time. The more I watched you, the more I realized something.”

Natasha takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly. “I wasn’t watching a man. I was watching Captain America.”

Rogers looks up, brows drawn together harshly, but the denial on the tip of his tongue dissolves like ash. Natasha holds his gaze with that indefinable confidence of hers, strong and unmovable even in the face of the Hulk.

“I of all people understand masks.” She says quietly, “I know how hard they are to take off...for the longest time I didn't know _how_ to take it off. But I learned, am _still_ learning really...thanks to Clint. Maybe it’s time I returned that favor.”

"I don't know what you're talking about Natasha." Rogers says wearily. "The only mask I'm wearing is the one _you_ gave me."

She smirks a little before her mouth resettles into its neutral line. Then she pushes her black box towards him, and he eyes it wearily. Her words have put him on edge, made his skin feel too tight and itchy, just aching for the suit instead of the strange modern clothes he’s still not used to. He takes the box, assures himself he can handle whatever is in it. He’s not that angry man with a hair-trigger that he’d woken up as. He’s gotten his emotions back under control now that he has a purpose again, now that he knows Captain America is still needed.

Unfortunately, he’s wrong about that, which is why it hits so much harder when he’s see’s… _it._

“SHIELD did their best to request any personal effects from the Smithsonian that they thought would help with your transition.” Natasha says, “But this wasn’t in the Smithsonian.”

“How did you…where did you find this?”

His voice is choked with emotion, his fingers trembling as he reaches into the box. He’d know it anywhere, the shape of it, the shine.

His mother's wedding ring.

Seeing it...it's like bursting from icy cold water, feeling awake and alive and numb all at once.

“You don’t remember where you left it?” She says with a quirk of her brow.

It takes him a moment, but it comes to him, the memory of the last time he'd seen his mother's Claddagh ring.

_Steve stands in the attic, his face covered with fabric to protect his weak lungs from the dust. A lockbox sits before him, metal and sturdy and impossible for him to lift. He slides the necklace from his neck with a pained grimace and kisses the ring hung upon it with feeling._

_“I’ll come back for ya ma, just like last time.” Steve says on a whisper as he puts the ring in the lockbox and latches it shut. He rests his forehead against the cool metal, watching the dust motes flutter in the thin light of the attic._

_“’m sorry.” He says, and this time it’s not aimed at his long-dead mother, but at the man whose ghost stares judging at him from the corner. “I’m sorry I can’t stay.”_

“The attic,” Rogers says hoarsely, and Natasha nods.

“When the house was passed down to the next of kin after your death, the owners must have found it…but for whatever reason, they never made any attempts to open it, and it was soon forgotten about.” Natasha shrugs, “It was easy enough to crack the lock code. Really, Steve? Your birth date?”

_Fourth of July, the fireworks bursting over the river, Steve laying on his side tracing the starburst patterns on the strong forearm swung over his chest. The arm shivers and tugs him close, wet kisses pressed against his nape, and Steve feels warm and happy and—_

“I think—” Rog- _Steve_ says stiltedly. He can’t take his eyes off the ring, feels like if he does he’ll lose himself again, fall back into numb forgetfulness. “I think I’d like to be alone, Natasha.”

Natasha doesn’t say anything, is in fact halfway out of her chair by the time he’s started talking like she already knew what he was going to say. She pats his shoulder as she passes, gives him a look full of meaning he can’t decipher.

“I hope you remember how to take it off _._ ” She says, “I’d like to meet the real you one day. From the little glimpses I’ve gotten of the guy, he seems like he’d be a nice friend to have.”

As soon as the door shuts, he’s sliding the photostatic veil from his face, throwing the terrible black wig from his head and sliding from his chair. Back against the wall, holding the ring in his hand and feeling more like himself than he has in _years,_ he just... _laughs._

Natasha had mentioned how SHIELD plied him with relics of his past, gotten from some museum exhibit or another, things they’d thought he’d want back. They given him his old comb, and he'd bemusedly told them to take it back to the Smithsonian, confused on why they'd even find it worthy of a museum in the first place but not needing it himself. None of the things they’d given him had had any _meaning_ to him, neither _Captain_ _Rogers_ nor _Stevie._

Never mind combs and half-finished sketchbooks, moldy clothes, and cracked leather jackets…this, _this,_ is the first thing from the past that really feels like _his._ Steve sniffles, and holds the ring up to the light with a little smile, and for the first time this century feels like _Steve_ again.

He’d forgotten about it, her ring. He’d left it behind in a box when he went to war, worried he’d lose it but promising himself he’d make it back home to but it back around his neck. And then there’d been the plane and the bombs and the ice, and he’d woken up and he’d _forgotten about it,_ forgotten to even think to _look_ for it.

Despite everything it meant to him, despite everything he’d done to get it back all those years ago. The life he’d made for himself along the way, the love he’d found and lost. All of it, pushed to the side to make way for _Captain America._ Steve realizes then the sheer volume of what he’d given up when he’d signed up to be an experiment and put on that suit so many years ago. It’s like it comes rushing back all at once, James and all the friends he'd made in those few perfect years, Natanya and Moira everyone in between, the memories and the pain together.

“Welcome to the twenty-first century, ma.” Steve whispers shakily, and then, looking up at the painting he's so avoided looking at, up into the grey eyes of a man long dead, and he says softly, sadly, “I'm sorry it took me so long to come back to you.”

The tears start coming then, and Steve presses a wet kiss to the ring, promising himself never to let it go again, promises to never _forget_ again.


	2. Chocolate Cake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve narrows his eyes at him, politeness forgotten in a moment of wariness. “…companionship sounds a helluva lot like a fancy word for whoring, pal.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so the real meat of the story begins...hope you all enjoy ;)

**1936  
**

_Rochelle's Tailoring Dry Cleaning & Pressing, _ _Brooklyn, NY_

Steve meets him only a week after selling his mother’s only remaining possession, while he's getting paid for a much-needed poster job.

“Mr. Rogers! If you have a moment?” Is the first thing the man says to him, catching him as he’s leaving the little tailoring store he’d just done several illustrated ads for. Steve looks up at him in surprise, and up, and up, and up.

Gee, this guy is _tall._ Tall and built, _a real baby grand_ a dame might say, dressed sharp as a tack with his hat held in his right hand and no hand at all on his left. Steve’s eyes pass over the pinned fabric of his jacket but he doesn’t stare, and something like approval shines in the stranger’s grey eyes when he meets them.

“I just saw the new ad, and wanted to say in person how much I admire your work, Mr. Rogers.”

“My…work?” Steve says, so taken off guard that he actually forgets his manners. Thankfully the man doesn’t seem to mind and just smiles. It’s a nice smile, full of laughter lines about his dark eyes and curled full lips. He’s older, maybe late fifties or early sixties, Steve would guess, and it’s the only thing that stops Steve from thinking the guy’s a grifter—he’s too well dressed to be in this part of Brooklynn after all, anyone would be suspicious.

“I’ve been admiring your ads for Rochelle’s shop for some time now. I noticed the uptick in quality from that terrible schmuck they had doing their ads before, and just had to meet you myself.” The man replaces his hat as he moves to exit the store with Steve, and then holds out his good hand, which Steve grips automatically in a firm handshake.

“Really?” Steve says in surprise. He doesn't sound like he's from the area, and he certainly doesn't _look_ _it_ either, with his expensive clothes and perfect grammar. “You come here often?”

“Oh, from time to time. I’m old friends with the owner.” Is all he says. “Where are my manners, my name is…Mr. Sakhar. A pleasure to make your acquaintance Mr. Rogers.”

Steve flushes at the title as he moves to wipe his hands on his pant leg before shaking his hand. “Thank you, mister…uh, Sack-car?”

“ _Sakhar.”_ The older man corrects, and Steve struggles to imitate him without looking like he is. 

“Right. Thank you. It’s not often I get compliments on my work, I hadn’t realized anyone would care to look, to be honest.”

Something sly slides across the older man’s face, turning his expression almost wolfish. “Oh, I care to look, you can be assured of that Mr. Rogers. In fact, the reason I approached you is to commission a piece from you. Perhaps you’d care to take dinner with me and we can speak business?”

“I—gee, really?” And Steve, because he’s only _just_ turned eighteen, is down on his luck and hasn’t seen a kind face in far too long—not to mention desperate for the money—accepts.

Mr. Sakhar hands him a slip of paper that he’d scrawled an address on, and Steve blinks as he reads it, realizing it’s in the big apple with a bit of dread. They agree to meet on a Friday after Steve’s done with his work at the grocers and part ways with a shake of hands and a smile.

When Steve takes the trolley and then the train into the city, he nervously adjusts his tie for about the fifth time as he stands outside their designated restaurant. Delmonico’s, _the_ Delmonico’s. It’s a place Steve knows of, but would never dare to step foot in himself for fear of it costing money just to breathe the air, and he’s suddenly thinking about turning around and hoofing it home.

But then Mr. Sakhar, who’s already waiting inside, sees him through the great big windows and waves at him. So much for a quick escape. He’d worn his best clothes, but he still feels terribly underdressed, like a real rag-a-muffin in his oversized shirt and poor fitting trousers and crooked tie. He wishes he’d thought to take the time to give the shoe shiner on the corner a penny so that at least his shoes wouldn’t look as beat up as they really are.

Mr. Sakhar seems to note his discomfort as they are seated, for he gives Steve another charming smile and pats his hand like Steve expects a grandfather might, though that could just be their age difference influencing Steve’s perceptions. “You look fine…Steve is it? May I call you Steve?”

“Uh, I s’pose,” Steve says, with an embarrassed look around at all the blue bloods sending looks down their noses at him. He’s never quite gotten used to being called ‘Mr. Rogers’ since his mother died. It always seemed too grown-up for the likes of him, even now that he’s of an age where people should be calling him that. He’s a man, even if his height and build often have people questioning it.

“Order whatever you’d like, Steve.” Mr. Sakhar tells him, “I’m buying.”

“Oh, no, sir I couldn’t possibly—“

“Don’t bother refusing,” He waves at Steve carelessly, “You’re a talented man, Steve, and I’d like to reward your hard work. If it makes you feel better, then know that I can write this dinner off as a business expense if I need to. Businessmen often take clients out for dinners and such.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, sir, but aren’t _you_ the client here?” Steve says with a huff of laughter. He’s somewhat taken off guard by the look that Mr. Sakhar sends him though and his smile wavers.

“Indeed I am, or I hope to be.” He says with a chuckle. “You haven’t agreed to my proposition yet.”

Steve sits back in his seat then and watches him a bit more guardedly. He can’t imagine what sort of art commission would be so strange that he would refuse it…which can only mean that this man has something else he wants from Steve, something that perhaps isn’t all above the counter.

“I’m not of a mind to be breakin’ the law, Mr. Sakhar.” Steve says, only half lying. He broke the law plenty, when it came down to laws he found foolish and overly harsh or even just getting a drink after a hard day.

“Please, Steve, order whatever you’d like.” Mr. Sakhar says, seemingly ignoring his words. He pushes the menu back to Steve. “Yes or no, you won’t be getting stuck with a bill, I promise. Relax, enjoy the free meal!”

Any other time Steve might refuse, insist he’s not a charity case, or otherwise make his polite good bye’s. But, that day, on the anniversary of his mother’s death, all Steve can see is his mother’s gold ring, taunting him in the window of a seedy pawn shop in the wrong end of town. All he can hear is his landlord breathing down his neck for the rent, or his roommate calling him a thief for accidentally eating one of his eggs because he’d forgotten he hadn’t had enough money to get groceries that week.

“Alright.” Steve sighs, and he orders the steak because he knows he could use the red meat. It’s not often he gets the chance to eat it, with how scrapped for money he’s been, and he’s been feeling terribly lightheaded and shaky as of late. Iron deficiency again most likely.

They make idle chit chat while they wait for their food, Mr. Sakhar does most of the prompting for conversation. Steve’s never been the social sort, on account of his childhood spent looking out the window from his sickbed as all the other kids play stickball in the alley. It’s one of the biggest reasons he knows art will never get anywhere serious. You need to have a silver tongue to sell art, run in just the right circles, go to gallery openings, and clink glasses with the elite and rich of society. People that can afford to put aside extra money for 'superfluous' things like art.

Steve has no silver tongue, and the only people he talks to are of the medical or church variety now that his ma is gone, so he sticks to sign painting and ads for local businesses and some typesetting part-time. He’d been doing alright, until he was laid up for a good two weeks with bronchitis and lost his typesetting job, the only steady job he had. He’d had to resort to selling his ma’s jewelry after that, something that still rankles.

“So, where are you from Steve?”

“Brooklyn, born and raised, if the accent isn’t obvious enough. Flatbush to be exact.” Steve says with a proud little quirk of his lips, “I’d guess you aren’t from around here?”

“Not born here, no.” Mr. Sakhar says, “Though I have lived here the majority of my life now. I just can’t seem to nock the accent, I’m afraid.”

“Half the city has an accent, doesn’t make ‘em any less New Yorkers.” Steve says upon seeing the rather dark look on the man’s face at the mention of his accent. He doesn’t mean to, but curiosity leads him to try and place it. The strange pronunciation of his vowels, the rolling of his ‘r’s, the harshness of his ‘h’s.

“Is it…I mean, are you Russian or…?”

“I suppose it’d depend on who you ask. Some would say _Jewish,_ some would say _Russian._ I would say American. Took the tests and everything.” Mr. Sakhar says with a funny little laugh, “Though, yes _,_ my first language is Russian, where I was born…I left long ago though, with my wife, Natanya. Things were becoming…uncomfortable for my people at the time, and we thought it best to leave.”

“You’re people?” Steve asks without thinking.

“Jews.” Mr. Sakhar says abruptly, though not unkindly. Steve tries not to show how embarrassed he is, feeling a bit of a fool for asking.

“When did you come over?” Steve asks to break the strange tension in the air.

“Hmmm, nearly thirty-five years ago now, just before the war.” Mr. Sakhar gives Steve that charming squinty-eyed grin again. “Time flies as they say.”

“…war? In America?” Steve says in confusion. He suddenly wishes he’d paid less attention in history class, and less time on his doodles. Then again, it’s rather recent history if it was thirty-five years ago.

“Manchuria. I was called to join the Russian forces. I left instead.”

Steve visibly balks. “You _deserted?”_

“Proudly. And why shouldn’t I have? My country did not care for me or mine, so why should I care for it?” Mr. Sakhar says with hard eyes. “ I wanted my children born free, outside of some crowded dirty _shtetl_. So I took my wife and left for America.”

Steve instantly feels wrong-footed, unsure of how to respond. A part of him finds the idea of deserting to be the worst kind of cowardice, and the other part of him is ashamed for judging at all. The world isn’t black and white like the pictures, Steve knows that…and besides, Russia isn’t America. He has no idea what the man might have gone through growing up there.

“And you like it here?” Steve says if only to keep the conversation going. He’s not used to making polite talk for so long, especially not with men old enough to be his grandfather.

“So far…I have had no reason to regret it. Sure, it was hard in the beginning, it felt like I’d traded one slum for another. But now, my business is flourishing, my wife is happy, my son is grown and well off, starting a family of his own.”

“That’s wonderful. Glad to hear it.” Steve says with a relieved smile. He thinks suddenly of his own mother, of just how similar her own life story might be to Mr. Sakhar’s had she lived longer. “…I know a lot of immigrants don’t get the warmest welcome. My mother bein' one of them.”

“And where was your mother from then?”

“The north of Ireland. She came over as a teenager to work with her aunt, met my father, and the rest is history I s'pose.” Steve only just barely manages to keep the smile on his face at the mention of his mother, and Mr. Sakhar seems to notice so he elaborates before he can ask. “She died a year ago now.”  
  
“I’m sorry.” Mr. Sakhar says, with real sincerity. Steve appreciates that he offers no further condolences, nor false words filled with pity. Just a simple apology.

“Thank you.” Steve says shortly, and he’s not going to say anything else but somehow his lips end up moving anyways. “She had a beautiful accent. Least I thought so. She would always knock me upside the head when I tried imitating it though. She didn’t want me sounding like her, like an immigrant.”

A sadness flashes over Mr. Sakhar’s face, one of shared understanding. “Most don't.”

Steve shakes his head, “She shouldn’t have had to think that way. She shouldn’t have had to deal with folks lookin’ down on her for something as small as the way she rolled her ‘r’s. And neither should you. It ain’t fair.”

“No.” Mr. Sakhar says, an expression too soft and warm to be looking at a stranger. “No, we shouldn’t. The world is not a fair place, Mr. Rogers, but if more people were just a bit more like you, I think it might be.”

It makes Steve blush and shake his head in denial, and that only seems to make Mr. Sakhar smile more.

By the end of their meal Steve’s told Mr. Sakhar his whole life story it seems, and yet knows very little about the man in kind. He knows he’s Jewish, originally from Russia, that he has a wife named Natania and a son that’s thirty whose name he’d said was Sasha. He doesn’t know his first name, what his business is or how he came to be so wealthy, and, more importantly, he doesn’t know what he wants from _Steve._ Worse, every time he tries to ask Mr. Sakhar smoothly and easily moves the conversation on to a different subject.

“Well, the steak was delicious.” Mr. Sakhar says with a satisfied, carefree air, “Dessert?”

If he were a more well-do, less polite, man this might be the point where he’d get up and leave, angry at his time being wasted. But no one has ever called Steven Grant Rogers _impolite,_ not unless his fist is meeting their teeth anyways. So Steve simply shakes his head and eyes the door, wondering how he might extricate himself from this strange situation.

“No? Are you sure? I’ve heard the chocolate cake here is to die for.” Mr. Sakhar says with that roguish crooked grin that makes him seem a decade younger. It only makes Steve more desperate to say yes considering the last time he had chocolate cake was…well, it was before his mother died actually. "Do you like chocolate cake, Steve?"

It’d been on his sixteenth birthday, just months before it became clear that the hacking coughs and wheezing breaths were TB. She’d been sick so often then, calling out of work too much and too little all at once. He has no idea where she found the time and money to make it for him, but _god_ it’d been so good. That day she’d insisted he sit at the table and not move an inch, made him let her do all the work and hit him lightly upside the head, called him a _little gombeen_ whenever he made a move to get up and help.

It was the last time he’d been able to just sit and enjoy himself. _Put aside all those worries that clog up your little head and just eat the cake_ she’d said like it was nothing. After that, her lungs had only gotten worse, and Steve had to pick up the slack in the rent when she’d lost her nursing job from too many sick days in bed. Their roles were quickly reversed, and he’d hated seeing the despair on his mother’s face as she watched him cook and clean and do his best by her.

He misses chocolate cake.

“Mr. Sakhar, sir, forgive me if this is impolite, but…it seems to me that this dinner has been everything _except_ business.” Steve finally says carefully. The man sits back in his chair, the carefree air of before gone, replaced by a strange nervous stillness. It only makes Steve more sure that there’s something he isn’t telling him. “Now, I thank you for the meal, really I’m grateful, I am, but…what is it that you want from me?”

Mr. Sakhar takes a deep breath, his hands fiddling with the real cloth napkin on the table. Steve eyes it, notes how easily he uses it, how unabashed he is to leave it riddled with food and wine stains. Steve had hardly touched his own, too afraid to dirty something so fine and likely more expensive than his whole outfit.

“Mr. Rogers. Steve.” The man starts, “As I said before, I’d like to commission a piece from you. I know your work at Rochelle’s was mostly pencil drawn or inked work…but do you paint as well?”

“Well…I’ve done some sign work and a few posters in paint, but nothing on canvas before. Expensive stuff, y’know.”

“I see. Price isn’t a factor, really, I can give you enough to buy yourself whatever you need.” Mr. Sakhar says, “I’d like a painting. A self-portrait in fact.”

It’s so mundane that it surprises Steve into leaning forward. “A self-portrait? You mean…of yourself?”

He shakes his head slowly, “No. A portrait of you. Nude.”

“...Excuse me?”

“Please do not misunderstand me, Steve. I think you’re very talented. And…if we can perhaps come to an arrangement…I’d like to commission many, many works from you in the future.”

Steve instantly stiffens, his back going straight and tense. Jaw clenched and hands fisted hard in the fabric of his pants, Steve feels his blood rush to his face at the implication in the man’s words and eyes. If he weren’t in such a fancy place he would’ve punched the guy in the nose right then.

Steve whispers furiously, “Now, listen mister, I’m not one to turn someone in for who they choose to take into their beds, but if you’ve a mind for a…a _companion_ , then I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong guy.”

Mr. Sakhar eyes him carefully as he leans forward. His hands are folded together on the table in front of him, mouth set and serious. He’s a severe-looking man when he’s not smiling. All the laughter lines about his face turn deep like terrible scars, and Steve gets a sudden chill of fear down his spine.

“Calm down, Steve.” Mr. Sakhar says, looking far too calm and assured for having just been accused of illegal intentions. “I’m not looking for a prostitute, I assure you.”

Steve stares Mr. Sakhar down like he has a dozen different block heads up to no good in back alleys, trying to get a read what move he’ll make next. “Are you…are you some kind of copper then? Trying to trick me into admitting something that’ll get me in trouble? I’ll have you know that just because I’m short and slight it doesn’t mean that I’m—I’m—”

“Of course not, of _course,_ it doesn’t.” Mr. Sakhar rushes to say, and he looks so _sincere_ that it almost makes Steve second guess himself. Then Mr. Sakhar leans forward with a strange look, his hands tapping almost nervously on the table. “But it also doesn’t mean you _aren’t,_ now does it?”

Steve leans back in shock, that anger building in him again. “I already told you, I may be down on my luck but I’m not so low as to stoop to…” Steve lowers his voice, “To prostitution.I think you’d be better set to head on down to the docks—“

Mr. Sakhar suddenly sits back, sighing deeply enough that Steve's shocked into cutting himself off.

“Well, I’ve made a right mess of this, haven’t I? Natanya always did say I had a no nose for being subtle.” Mr. Sakhar huffs, shaking his head “I already told you, I’m not looking for that. Please, Steve, sit down, can’t we try this again?”

Struck by the plaintive tone of voice, the open hands and pleading look in Mr. Sakhar’s eyes, slowly, Steve sits. He flushes a bit, thinking perhaps he’s been a fool, jumped to conclusions.

“I just—I don’t understand why you’d ask for somethin' like that. A…nude painting of…of me. You don’t even _know_ me.”

Steve finds himself caught by the expression in Mr. Sakhar’s dark eyes, intense and heated. It’s not the kind of stare that a man gives another man, especially not one old enough to Steve’s grandfather. All the same, it makes his chest flutter queerly.

“I do not need to know you to find you beautiful.” He says softly, and Steve flushes again, looks around for prying eyes and ears, caught between outrage and fear, and a helpless sort of heat. “I’m not asking for anything but a painting Steve…and perhaps, if you’re amenable, your time and companionship.”

Steve narrows his eyes at him, politeness forgotten in a moment of wariness. “… _companionship_ sounds a helluva lot like a fancy word for whoring, pal.”

He sees Mr. Sakhar smirk a bit at the harsh words, and it sends another fission of heat down his spine.

“No sex. Just…companionship.” He insists. “Art. Wine. Good food, and good conversation. One night a week, and I’ll patron your art. Commission pieces from you, take you to any gallery you wish, or if you’d rather…pay your rent.”

Tentatively, Steve says, “That’s…that’s all you want? Someone to…talk to?”

Mr. Sakhar hums, “If that’s all your willing to give me...though I wouldn’t say no to more. Whatever you’re comfortable with of course.”

Steve sees no untruth in the man’s face, sees no dishonesty or maliciousness…and it makes him hesitate, where otherwise he might haul off and punch the guy in the nose for suggesting such a thing.

“…Why?” He can’t help but ask. “It’s…what your asking for, it’s…”

 _Immoral. Illegal. Dangerous._ _Shameful._

He’s been nothing but kind and respectful to him so far, and the fact he’s come out with it so brazenly, _risked_ so much to ask a perfect stranger…it makes Steve wonder at what could make a man so desperate.

“Life can be…lonely, for men like me.” Mr. Sakhar says with a sad smile. “I know you may not understand, that many find it shameful, but…I suppose that’s how life goes. I cannot help what I desire, no more than my wife can. She has a lover as well, you see…a woman by the name of Moira. They’re quite happy.”

If Steve’s Irish skin could get any redder he might as well just change his surname to ‘tomato’ and call it a day. His sense of moral duty kicks in a moment later, bursting through his own personal embarrassment as he realized just how easily this man is telling his dangerous secrets to a stranger. “You…you really shouldn’t be telling me all this. What if I leave now and head straight to the police to tell him everything you’ve told me?”

Mr. Sakhar’s face hardens, but only for a moment, as he says, “I’m nearly sixty, _Mr. Rogers_. I'd like to think I've learned to be smarter than that at my age. Do you really think I’d give you my real name?”

Steve’s eyes widen, startled. He’s stuck by the sudden understanding of just how little he knows the man in front of him, how rather stupid he’d been to agree so easily to a private dinner meeting in a place he’d never been before. He’s suddenly grateful that they’re in a public place, even if they _are_ seated at the most secluded of the tables.

“Besides, I know you wouldn’t. You’re not that sort of man, are you? I think Mr. Smith would agree with me on that.”

Something about the words niggle at Steve, make him tilt his head at the smirk on the older man’s face as he realizes who ‘Mr. Smith’ is. As in Billy Smith, the shop attendant at Rochelle’s that he’d found on his knees in front of another man behind the dumpster the other night.

As soon as he’d come upon them, Billy’s _companion_ had fumbled himself away and then straight up _punched_ Billy, yelling and hollering like he’d been _assaulted_ rather than getting a suck job. Steve had very eagerly given the guy a shiner to rival Billy’s, pulling him off the poor fella and socking him right in the eye. It’d obviously not been what the other guy’d been expecting since it’d been enough to run him off despite how obviously outclassed Steve would be in a real scrap with him. After, he’d helped Billy up and back to his place, and left him with nothing more than a sad smile and a warning to _be more careful where you do that sorta thing next time. Anyone coulda found yous two back there, and what woulda happened if that someone was a copper?_

“You’ve been _watching_ me?”

Mr. Sakhar shrugs, “There’s quite a bit of risk in an offer like this. I needed to be sure you weren’t the type to be cruel about it at the very least. But, even if you did somehow discover my name and go to the police, I have my ways of getting it sorted…”

 _Well if that ain’t real ominous,_ Steve thinks with a frisson of unease.

The unrealness of the situation crashes upon him, and he sits there with glazed eyes and a limp tongue until Mr. Sakhar, or whatever his real name is, places a warm hand on his knee under the table. He jumps, but Mr. Sakhar just holds his hand there gently as he catches Steve's eye and...Steve, for some reason, doesn't want to pull away. The table cloth hangs low enough that no one can see, but that’s not what has Steve’s breath pulling short and quick.

“Think about it, Steve. There’s no need to make a decision right away.” Mr. Sakhar smiles kindly at him. “But I’d just like to say…you seem the sort to insist on doing everything on your own, stubborn as a mule and independent as a cat. I bet you don’t even take help when it’s offered by your priest. Do I have the right of it?”

Steve scowls a bit, not wanting to say _yes,_ but Mr. Sakhar just looks knowingly at him. “I don’t accept charity. Nothing wrong with that is there? A man should be able to sort out his own matters.”

“Of course, that’s true.” He says easily, voice lowering. “But, there’s no shame in asking for a little help now and again either. Wouldn’t it be nice to set down all that weight your carrying on your shoulders? Maybe let someone else carry it for a while? Let someone take care of _you?”_

Again, not what he’s expecting the man to say, and it leaves Steve blinking dumbly with his mouth gaping open and closed like an idiot. He doesn’t even know how he’s supposed to respond to that.

“Here. This is the address I’d like you to meet me at, in say…three weeks' time? Is that enough time to paint such a thing?”

“I…yes, probably.” Steve manages, swallowing around nothing. “But I haven’t said yes yet?”

“I’ll be waiting, 6 pm sharp.” Is all Mr. Sakhar says, and he places the written address into Steve’s stiff hand. “If you do not show, then I’ll know your answer.”

He leaves Steve there with a lingering pat to his shoulder and a brisk stride out of the restaurant. For a wild intense moment, Steve thinks he’s left him with the bill, that this has been some elaborate con that he’s been naive enough to fall for, but he’s proven wrong when a prim server comes by and tells him the bill is settled, and then sets a slice of chocolate cake and an envelope full of money—labeled _‘for supplies’—_ in front of him.

Steve wants to get up and leave it there untouched, but the idea of wasting such expensive and obviously high-quality food is enough to force the fork back into his hand.

It’s the best damn cake he’s ever had.

—

Three days later, staring at the gold ring still sitting in the window of Pickett’s Pawn Shop, Steve thinks of his mother lovingly cleaning it when her marriage anniversary came around and he thinks of his bills piling up unpaid, and he thinks of his roommate Johnny that’s threatened three times now to kick him out if he can’t make ends meet on his part of the heating bill, and he thinks of the miserable Mr. Hornik who always comes up with a dozen reasons to give him half what his work is worth and—

And he thinks of his mother working herself into an early grave to make him a birthday cake, and the cake Mr. Sakhar had left with him at the restaurant—alongside his strange offer of payment for a nude painting and his _company_ of all things.

Steve’s eyes refocus, looking not _through_ the glass but _at_ it, at his own reflection looking back at him. He’s small, thin, boney, constantly in ill health, deaf in one ear with a weak heart, and rasping lungs. He’s no one’s idea of a catch.

But Mr. Sakhar called him beautiful.

He buys a canvas that night with Mr. Sakhar's envelope money, sets it, and all his paints, up right next to the mirror that hangs over his beat-up wardrobe. He closes the curtains, strips himself down, blushing all the way.

For a long time, he just stares at himself, wondering how he's going to make a painting of _him_ beautiful. Should he idealize himself? Round out his hips, fill out his shoulders? Steve's afraid that if he paints himself as he is, Mr. Sakhar will find him wanting, and isn't that a strange thought? He should _want_ Mr. Sakhar to dislike his painting, shouldn't he? He should want to drop it off, take the money for the painting so he can make this month's rent, and then wash his hands of the whole affair and never think of it again.

In the end, Steve decides to paint what he see's, nothing more, nothing less. Whatever will be, will be.

For once he doesn’t mind the smell of turpentine and paint. In fact, he finds they smell a hell of a lot sweeter than before.

Almost like chocolate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two guesses of who Mr. Sakhar is lol Also, kudos to anyone who can guess why I picked that for his fake name!


	3. Pseudonyms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve’s descent into sin and debauchery is a slow and gradual thing. He is the frog in the pot of water, not aware that he’s being boiled alive until it’s too late.
> 
> It starts innocent enough, but doesn’t it always?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the lovely comments and kudos! Glad to see some people are enjoying my fic, though the marvel fandom is certainly a tougher crowd than I'm used to as far as numbers go. Must be because it's such a big fandom or something, hard to get people to give new fics from new authors a chance? Well, whatevs, so long as some people get a kick out of it I might as well post it since it's finished anyway lol

**1936**

_102 Prospect Park West, Brooklyn, NY_

The address he'd left Steve didn't lead him out of Brooklyn, which is a pleasant surprise since he'd been expected to make the long hard journey into the city again. He isn’t surprised, however, to find the building situated quite firmly in the neighborhood of Park Slope, and even less surprised that it’s in its most affluent area overlooking Prospect Park, often referred to as the ‘Gold Coast.’

Steve knows more and more of the buildings are being subdivided into apartments as the downturn in the economy worsens and the rich move to the suburbs, but this part of Park Slope seems to be holding on to its wealth and affluence by the skin of its teeth.

The building is made of some smooth brown-red stone rather than brick, with elaborate finishings around the door and curved bay windows and there’s a false balcony on the top floor with a copper railing that’s gone beautifully green over time. There’s a grand staircase leading up to the front entrance and Steve’s a bit embarrassed to say he’d almost made himself late just staring at it, feeling too poor to even set foot on it. He quickly rushes up the steps and presses the buzzer labeled 'Apt. 1', only slightly disappointed that there's no last name written beside the number. Steve supposes it was a reach to hope Mr. Sakhar would forget to take his real name off the building's entrance panel.

“Steve. You came. I’d almost convinced myself you wouldn’t.” Mr. Sakhar says with a relieved looking smile as he ushers Steve into his home—one that’s likely his second home going by the absence of any sign of his wife or son. "Come in, I'll give you a tour. You can set the painting over there."

The walls of the sitting areas and entryway are covered in pristine wallpapers and filled with fine art, the hallways have vases full of fresh flowers at the ends of them—which Steve is careful to avoid breathing around lest it set off his allergies—and every inch of the place is fitted with intricately carved crown molding that isn’t broken or cracked or rotting. The windows are huge and draped with enough fabric to outfit Steve for a week, the floors are all polished wood without a scrape in sight, unless they’re under one of the many intricate braided area rugs.

Steve can’t help marveling over the _size_ of the place. It’s narrow, but four stories high, _four!_ Steve can’t imagine what he’d do with this many rooms and bathrooms and _sitting areas._ It’s rather like walking through a mirror and finding a whole new world on the other side, the world that the rich and affluent see as _normal._

“This was the first home I bought with my wife, Natanya.” Mr. Sakhar explains, “We moved away into the city some years after buying it though, and it’s become somewhere I come for peace and quiet more than anything. Oh! Come see the kitchen, it's where I keep all the new appliances on the market...Natanya doesn't like them in the house so I keep them here. Set the kitchen on fire _once_ and now I can't even bring a new toaster home...”

The kitchen is outfitted with an electric range and a real refrigerator rather than an icebox, with more counter space than Steve would know what to do with. There’s things even Steve doesn’t recognize, and Mr. Sakhar gladly points out what each thing is with barely contained glee, as Steve stares on in bemused confusion at why machines that, to him, seem to make a simple tasker three times as complicated and then call it 'time-saving.'

"...oh, and this, this is an _electric dishwasher."_ Mr. Sakhar says of the last appliance, a strange metal lidded thing that looks like it's more likely to break the dishes than wash them. Still, Mr. Sakhar looks at it like it's the pinnacle of technology and advancement. "I bought into a prototype when the Hydro-Electric Manufacturing Company first introduced it, but then of course the stock market crashed in 1929, and they stopped production…"

Steve can’t help but laugh a bit at how young Mr. Sakhar looks in his obvious enthusiasm for the gadgets, even if he thinks privately they seem more trouble to use than they’re worth. "It'd sure be nice not to have to wash them by hand. Does it actually work?"

"Of course it works! In fact my maid, Leah, she used it just last night." Mr. Sakhar says as he pulls open the lid an gestures inside at the rack of dishes. "See? Perfectly clean, and...oh."

Steve bites his tongue at the blank look that comes over Mr. Sakhar's face as he pulls out the rack to find three of the dozen dishes inside are cracked and broken. Slowly he pushes the rack back inside and closes the lid, clears his throat. "Well, it was just a prototype. Anyways, lets' move on to the sitting room."

Steve only just barely manages to keep a straight face as he follows the older man into the sitting area, where he'd left his folio bag and the mortifying painting therein. He blushes fiercely as he sits in one of the plushest chairs he’s ever felt in his life, forgotten nerves flaring abruptly in him as he realizes the unveiling of his commissioned piece is upon him. He'd hoped the tour would last longer.

Here in the apartment, Mr. Sakhar seems so different than the stiff and tightly coiled man Steve had sat across from three weeks ago. His smiles are easier, friendlier, his movements aren't stiff and tense, and his clothing is soft and comfortable—house clothes rather than streetwear. Steve feels overdressed this time, knows he must look doggy with his church clothes and his hair that he'd combed and slicked best he could in an attempt to make it look good.

He's is missing an arm and he’s older, certainly, probably old enough to be Steve’s grandfather with a son who has a family of his own. And yet…he’s stands tall and straight, his shoulders are broad and untouched by the stoop of old age, and his beard is dark and full, streaked with white and trimmed close to his face. His hair is more grey than brown and unfashionably long but it’s thick and slicked stylishly away from his face in a way that harkens back to some long-forgotten time of elegance and prestige. His face is lined and weathered by time, but his eyes are bright and full of life and he has a dimple on his chin Steve can just barely make out under his beard, and his every smile looks wicked and tempting. Steve hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it since he left Delmonico's.

He’s instantly ashamed at the thought. It’s not like that sort of thing is new to Steve, and neither is ignoring said thoughts. It’s certainly not made any easier though by Mr. Sakhar looking at him like _that._ He doesn’t like to think all the insults slung at him by bullies are _right,_ that he really is _wrong_ in that sense, but…but since he met Mr. Sakhar it’s like the curtains have been pulled back and Steve’s forced to look at himself in the light of day or else go blind.

“Would you like anything? Coffee? Dessert?” Mr. Sakhar says as he sits in the chair just opposite of Steve.

Steve shakes his head, hands nervous on his canvas portfolio bag, but then Mr. Sakhar says, “Nothing? Not even dessert? I have sugar cookies somewhere around here...t won't be as good as the cake from Delmonico's but I like them well enough. How was the cake, by the way? I’ve heard it’s the best in the city.”

He doesn't even ask if Steve stayed long enough to eat the cake after he left as if he knew already that he had. The server must have reported it to him after the fact, and feels a sliver of unease at the display of power, wondering if perhaps Mr. Sakhar had said it deliberately. It'd be so easy for this rich well off mystery man to do whatever he wished to Steve now that he's here in his home, alone.

That really shouldn't make a shiver of heat slice down his spine, but then Steve never was one to flinch in the face of danger.

“It…it was very good, yes, thank you.” Steve manages. And he knows he shouldn't, knows the cookies could be poisoned or drugged but—“And…yes, cookies sounds swell if you have them.”

“Good, good, I’ll get it now for you.” He says as Steve beats himself black and blue inside for speaking with his gut rather than his head.

“Well? Let’s see it then.” Mr. Sakhar says as he comes back with cake and coffee, looking eagerly to the tied up canvas.

“Oh, right.” Steve fumbles with the tie, slipping the black fabric down the sides of the canvas as he pulls it out and looks awkwardly around for somewhere to set it. He settles on the couch, leaning it against the back of the cushions and pausing before he totally unveils it. “It’s…it’s not my best work. Though I s'pose the subject matter don’t help none.”

He laughs, a self-deprecating joke meant to break the tension, but Mr. Sakhar only looks at him severely.

“I’m sure it’ll be beautiful _because_ of the subject matter.” He says, much too serious and sincere.

But _oh,_ does that make Steve flush and clear his throat awkwardly with embarrassment. Men just don’t call other men _beautiful_ like it’s the easiest thing in the world. Except it seems, for Mr. Sakhar.

“Let me see, Steve.”

Steve steps away with nervous hands, unable to look at the canvas despite having spent hours staring at it by now. Mr. Sakhar lets out a long hushed sigh that sends shivers down his spine.

His first, but likely not his last, self-portrait.

Steve's nude, leaning against the wall of his bedroom, his right knee cocked and casting a dim shadow along the soft line of his limp cock. Steve knows what he looks like of course, knows the knobbiness of his knees and the sharpness of his ribs, the concave curve of his belly, the length and thickness of his own member. He knows all those parts of himself, but over the course of the last few weeks, Steve had been forced to find _new_ parts, things in himself he’d never looked for. _Good_ things.

Because wasn’t that what Mr. Sakhar wanted? He’d seen something in Steve, something _beautiful_ he’d said, it was only fair that Steve try to find that in the painting he commissioned.

And in a way he had. He’d found it in the curve of his buttocks, in the largeness of his eyes, the fan of his pale lashes against freckled cheeks, the length of his fingers, and the shadow of his cock against his pale thigh. He’s not sexy or beautiful or any of those things he would think a nude figure painting would try to be…but still there’s something there that draws the eye, a sensuality and vulnerability that’s appealing. Steve looks back to Mr. Sakhar and wonders at what he sees, wonders what he's thinking, whether he still likes what he see's or if he'd been expecting something more idealized, something less boney and skinny and pale.

He entertains the thought of what he might look like if he were more like those perfect Grecian figures in the museums, with their minuscule cocks and uncrooked noses and perfectly defined muscles. It's almost laughable, the thought of him looking like that.

“The color choices…very unusual.”

“It’s…it’s my eyes.” Steve says with a little shrug, “Doctors say I don’t see certain colors right, I guess. Not a problem with my greyscale pieces but…well, s’why I don’t usually do color works.”

“I thought you said you’d done paintings before?”

“I have, but…not anything like this, just signs. A few paintings for the classes I used to take before...before my mother died.” Steve says, starting to get self-conscious. “If you don’t like it, I could—“

“No, no! I love it.” Mr. Sakhar interrupts, “I think it makes it all the more interesting…and what’s art if it’s not interesting?”

“An ad, obviously,” Steve mumbles without thinking and is only a little surprised when Mr. Sakhar gives him a delighted look at his cheek. 

"That's fair." He says with a little snort, and then turns back to stare deeply at the painting. The look on his face is enough to give Steve the courage to really look at his painting and see it with fresh eyes.

Steve knows he isn’t attractive by typical standards, the number of dames that’d turned him down is proof enough of that, but standing here, seeing the frank appreciation on this wealthy, charming, older man’s face as he looked at him laid out nude in paint…well, it certainly is something. For perhaps for the first time in his life, Steve thinks he might _like_ what he sees.

“Gorgeous.” Mr. Sakhar says, but he's not looking not to the painting. “You’ve exceeded my expectations.”

Steve doesn’t know what to say to that so he stays silent, lets the tension between them grow more and more thick. He can’t decide if he’s happy or disappointed when Mr. Sakhar breaks their eye contact to push the untouched plate of cookies between them towards Steve. 

Steve’s never had sugar cookies, the closest he’s had to cookies were his ma’s shortbread she made for his Confirmation. His first bite he has to hold himself back from eating the whole plate, and even then it’s tough to hold himself back. At least his enthusiasm seems to be amusing Mr. Sakhar.

“I was worried you would be disappointed I didn’t have more chocolate cake.” He says with a look like he’s trying not to laugh. “I’m glad to see I didn’t have anything to worry about.”

“They're _really_ good, sir.” Steve says, very pointedly not taking another cookie even as he eyes the plate like a starving dog. Mr. Sakhar laughs, pushes the plate closer to him.

Alright, maybe just one more cookie.

“You have a little…” Mr. Sakhar trails off, pointing to his own mouth. Steve wipes at his face quickly with his own handkerchief, too self-conscious of dirtying one of the ones laid out for him.

“Did I get it?”

“Not quite.” Mr. Sakhar says, and then before Steve can even blink he’s leaning forward and swiping his thumb against the corner of his mouth. “There we go…perfect.”

“Th-thanks…” Steve chokes out, stomach flipping in a way it never has before. He’s full now, but he almost wants to eat another cookie on the off chance Mr. Sakhar might do that again.

Steve wonders suddenly if the bullies at school were right to call him _queer,_ if he really is bent in the way Mr. Sakhar suggested he himself is, if maybe Steve just hadn’t wanted to admit it. He still holds on to a thin line of hope though, that maybe if he just found the right woman that he’ll be…be _fixed_ somehow. But...well, what kind of woman would take a man that would even _consider_ doing something like this?

Steve pulls away, fearful of his own response to the older man’s touch. How quickly he’s fallen to temptation. Father Peter would be so disappointed in him.

He leaves the Park Slope home several hours later, sugar still on the tip of his tongue, down one painting but up a whole hundred dollars. It’s more money than he’s ever held in his hand at one time, and he sweats through his undershirt on his walk back to the tiny rooming house that he shares with Johnny. He takes all the main roads and avoids the alley’s, and tries not to think about how little he’s looking forward to returning to his empty bare-bones room, void of sweet cookies and warm company.

—

The next day he goes straight to Pickett’s Pawn Shop, buys his mother’s ring back with his head held high. If he turns into some dark alleyway and lets himself cries tears of joy and relief while no one’s looking, well, that’s no one’s business but his own.

—

Steve’s descent into sin and debauchery is a slow and gradual thing. He is the frog in the pot of water, not aware that he’s being boiled alive until it’s too late.

It starts innocent enough, but doesn’t it always?

Mr. Sakhar sticks to his promise, paying him for his commissions of increasingly lewd paintings but never pushing for sex. He's a strange man, in turns overly serious and full of boyish smiles even as he asks for utterly debauched paintings. They always agree on the next painting at their weekly meeting after the delivery of the last one, and Steve begins to get a pavlovian response to those meetings, heart beating fast and palms sweating on the way over, wondering what terrible wonderful thing he'll ask him to create next.

This last time he'd asked Steve to paint just his cock, in varying levels of hardness, which Steve had found in turns embarrassing and rather academically interesting to do. He’d had a one-off job illustrating a chapter in a medical textbook last summer and, though they’d never asked him to do any drawings of _genitalia_ , he told himself this was really no different than that.

Each piece takes about a month to complete, but in the in-between Mr. Sakhar has him come to the same apartment once a week to go to dinner or an art show or simply just to sit and talk together. Their conversations are often about art, which Steve is more than happy to talk about for hours, or sometimes about more mundane things like hobbies, which Steve has never had the privilege of thinking about outside of drawing, but which Mr. Sakhar encourages him to explore.

As the months go by, Steve…finds he’s begun to look forward to his weekly talks with Mr. Sakhar even more so than the new commissions and the money and everything else. Since his mother died he’s been so alone, it’s nice to have someone to talk to that really _sees_ him. Not in the...more literal sense, even though the paintings do ensure that too, but in the sense that Steve feels Mr. Sakhar might actually like him just for him _._

Sure, he rooms with his grade school friend Johnny Redding, but the guy’s more acquaintance than friend at this point. One too many times asking the guy to spot him rent after a bout of pneumonia had done in any friendly notions between them most likely. He always paid his debts of course, but there was only so much a fella could stand to do for a guy they didn’t even like that much to begin with.

Mr. Sakhar though, he’s always so…attentive. He seems as if he really _cares_ about what Steve has to say. Three months in, Mr. Sakhar takes him to a gallery opening, and Steve finds he doesn’t even mind so much when Mr. Sakhar leans down as Steve makes to leave and gives him a kiss goodbye right on the lips. He is a little surprised of course, but he doesn’t pull away, even leans up for it when the second one comes. It seems to make Mr. Sakhar happy if the way he groans is anything to go by, and he’s learned the happier Mr. Sakhar is the happier Steve is, in more ways than one.

The thought always causes a curl of shame in Steve’s stomach, a reminder that he’s doing this, _sinning,_ for money, for food, for _things._ Always makes him start wondering if he's taking advantage of an old lonely man—not to mention that he's doing something that Father Peter says will send his immortal soul to hell. He knows he should end this strange relationship before it goes any further.

But…despite it all, Steve can’t bring himself to stop their arrangement, for several reasons. He’s earned more money off his art in the past few months than he ever thought he would, and the fact that its erotic art isn’t enough to douse his pride over the achievement, the knowledge that he's actually making his rent every month with plenty left over.

More than all that though is the fact that Steve just …genuinly _likes_ spending time with Mr. Sakhar.

He enjoys his company, his intelligent conversation that Steve hasn't found in anyone since those few expensive art lessons he's taken at the local trade college. He likes the way he doesn't seem to mind that Steve's a bit of a crumb or that he's sick sometimes and has to cancel their weekly meetings. He likes that he never puts Steve down as 'lesser' just because he can't get a job at a factory on account of his lungs, or the fact that he draws rather than does 'mens work' down at the docks.

Steve even ends up admitting to Mr. Sakhar, when he pushes him about finding a hobby outside work, that he used to help his ma with knitting sometimes when he was holed up sick in bed with nothing better to do, and though he always complained something terrible about it, he actually secretly _liked it._

The next week, Mr. Sakhar gives him a basket full of knitting supplies that would make a grandmother faint with happiness. Steve feels mighty awkward leaving with it, and he’s almost tempted to just drop it off at a shelter for the homeless or somewhere that’ll get good use out of it. But then he sees Mr. Sakhar’s crooked smile at the corner of his eye and he remembers how hopeful he’d sounded when he’d asked to have the first scarf that Steve makes, and somehow he finds himself at home still carrying the basket with Johny giving him a strange side-eyed look.

"You gonna start pinching my cheeks and wearing an apron too, Rogers?" Johny says with a rather mean smirk.

"Leave off Johny," Steve grumbles as if his reaction doesn't bother him any, but in truth it does a little. It always does when fellas look at him with that _smirk_ that says they think he's an easy target to let off steam on, to make fun and bully. Not that he can pop Johny in the nose like he usually does with people that look at him like that, considering they live together and all. He sets the basket of knitting supplies in the corner of his room and doesn't look at it all week.

Steve learns very quickly that Mr. Sakhar cares very little for Steve’s ‘what would neighbors would think’ excuse when the next week comes and Steve has to admit he hasn't even started on the scarf Mr. Sakhar had looked so excited at getting.

“I just…I can’t do everything by lamp, I’d have to keep the curtains open for the daylight, and what if the neighbor’s see?” Steve defends himself, thinking of his roommate's reaction just to seeing the supplies nevermind seeing Steve actually _using_ them.

“Oh, bull, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. If you enjoy doing it, then what does it matter what some schmuck says?” Mr. Sakhar says his best ‘grumpy old man’ frown. “Don’t let some bonehead stop you from doing what you like Steve, or you’ll end up some boring old man who does nothing and likes no one.”

“Like you, you mean?” Steve says before he can think better of it then holds his breath—it’s the first time that Steve’s let his guard down enough to be anything but polite around him and he’s almost worried that sort of teasing won’t be welcome.

But Mr. Sakhar only looks up at him with a brief shocked look that quickly devolves into pleased laughter and Steve’s shoulders instantly relax.

“I knew you weren’t as sweet as you like everyone to think you are.”

Steve scrunches his nose, insulted, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m as sweet as apple pie…also, no one says bonehead anymore except old folks, just so y'know.”

"You _punk,"_ Mr. Sakhar laughs, and Steve finds out then that if he _really_ gets him laughing, his whole face loses about ten years. He wants to make him laugh like that again, wants to make him lose that seemingly constant weariness in the lines of his face, the distant sadness in his eyes he has when he’s left alone to his thoughts for too long. “I’ll have you know…that I have a hobby that’s just as embarrassing as knitting, and I don’t give a clap whether anyone knows about it. Do you want to know what it is, Steve?”

Steve leans forward, instantly sharp-eyed and tense. He gets so very little in the way of personal information about his mysterious patron that he nods maybe a bit too eagerly if the amused look on Mr. Sakhar’s face is anything to go by.

“Well, if you really want to know…I absolutely _love…_ ” Mr. Sakhar says slowly, deliberately drawing it out. “Baking _.”_

“Baking?” Steve mutters, confused, instantly thinking of his ma standing in the kitchen beating together her Christmas spice cake. That turns into imagining Mr. Sakhar in his mother’s apron, which makes him cover his mouth to hide his smile.

“Steve Rogers, are you laughing at me? I’ll have you know there’s plenty of men that bake.” Mr. Sakhar says with that crooked smile of his that lights up his whole face. “Who do you think makes the cake you like so much at Delmonico’s?”

“Sorry,” Steve says, feeling suddenly foolish and naive. Of course, he knows women aren’t often hired for such jobs, and every famous chef or baker touted as working at this or that fancy restaurant are all male as far as he knows. “Is that what you do then?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Mr. Sakhar smiles slyly, as he always does when he catches Steve fishing for personal information. He thinks that’ll be the end of it and he’ll leave Steve without an answer as per usual, but then he laughs and shakes his head. “No, no, it’s just a hobby really. I like the science of it, the predictability of baking.”

“I thought your maid cooks though?”

“Oh, cooks, _yes,_ bakes, no _._ I’m terrible at cooking. The best I can make is soup, and even that Natanya says is rather awful.”

“Then…the desserts that are always here for me.” Steve says slowly, “You make them?”

“I make them.” Mr. Sakhar confirms, placing a gentle hand against his shoulder briefly. “I can teach you if you want?”

“I don’t know…the last time I used an oven I nearly burnt the block down.” Steve laughs. “Cake seems a bit complicated for me, to be honest.”

“We’ll start simpler then…” Mr. Sakhar says thoughtfully, as he throws an arm over Steve’s shoulder to pull him into the kitchen, “C’mon. Sugar cookies are easy, even you can’t mess it up, doll.”

He’s been doing that more and more often lately, Steve notes. Touching him, getting in close, calling him sweetheart names. And despite himself, Steve finds it’s worryingly…good.

Steve doesn’t burn the cookies, but it’s a near thing. If Mr. Sakhar hadn’t been there to realize Steve’d set the timer for much, much too long, the night would have turned out with a tray full of cookies in the garbage rather than melting in their mouths.

Mr. Sakhar gets a very, very warm scarf the next time they meet, and the proud and delighted smile on his face had been worth the embarrassment Steve felt when Janine McIntyre from the building next door had seen him tangled in yarn through the open window. Steve had never seen the old bat do more than scowl, but that day she’d laughed hard enough that she dropped the line of dry clothes she was trying to bring in. They’d both watched in silent horror as her flouncy underwear had drifted down to the dirty alley between their buildings.

(Steve helps her rewash and hang her clothes when she’d asked, even despite the embarrassment, because she was old and rheumatic and that’s just the type of person Steve is.)

It makes it doubly nice when Mr. Sakhar says to him—while modeling his frumpy sad scarf and looking ridiculous—that he should look into making more and giving them away down in one of the tin cities.

“I’ll supply the yarn and such, and all you have to do is _make_ them." And Mr. Sakhar gets all too serious again and puts his hand out towards Steve like he really is pitching a business deal to an important fat cat. "Partners?”

Steve says yes, of course, and even manages to enlist the help of Mrs. McIntyre after the fact. She’s more than eager to help once she hears where the hats and scarves are going, which is surprising considering she’s never once given Steve a smile in all the months he’s lived at the rooming house. Though when he finds out she only does so because she’s just terribly self-conscious about her missing front tooth, he makes a point to tell her she has a lovely smile every time he sees it.

Steve supposes if he had to put a word to how he feel with Mr. Sakhar…it would be _brave._ And isn’t that strange? Mr. Sakhar has a way of exposing things about Steve that were hidden even from himself it seems.

Steve never thought of himself as lacking such a thing as bravery, especially considering how quick he is to jump into fights, defend what he thought right. But it’s a different sort of bravery than that, what Mr. Sakhar makes him feel. A sort of courage that applies less to standing up for what is right and more for…standing up for himself, for doing things he likes and wants despite what others may think.

He finds that Mr. Sakhar is… _easy_ to be around, despite how their age difference might suggest that they would find little common ground. Sometimes, when Mr. Sakhar is in one of his quiet distant moods, they’ll just sit, and Mr. Sakhar will put his hands in his hair while they listen to his terribly old and boring music until Steve has to leave. It should be boring, but it’s not. It reminds him a whole lot of his mother sitting by his bed, singing some old Gaelic hymn with Steve safe and warm without a care in the world.

He almost feels like they could be _friends,_ if not for all the…well, kissing and such. And that's the thing, isn't it? Steve isn't sure he'd _want_ to be just friends. The longer their acquaintance goes on, the harder it is to sit in church and say his hail mary's with real zeal and shame. He's beginning to accept more and more the sort of man he is...the sort who prays for forgiveness over his sins and then turns around the very next day and gladly commits them again.

He shouldn't dread leaving Mr. Sakhar's place at the end of the night, shouldn't find pleasure in painting the debauched unchristian things he asks of him...shouldn't touch himself at night thinking of his kisses, of his hands. He should want to stop.

But he doesn't.

—

“But what do you really _want,_ Steve?” Mr. Sakhar asks one day. Steve's already answered once, but he’d listed only necessary things for survival. “Outside of food and shelter and better art materials…what do you want for your _life?"_

"To know your real name, to start," Steve says under his breath, and Mr. Sakhar just laughs.

"Now where's the fun in that?" He says, as he always does. "Really Steve. What do you see in your future? Maybe marriage? Settle down with a few children, a house outside the city?"

“I…I s'pose I haven’t had much time to think about it.” Steve finally says with a frown, “But…marry? I can’t even get a girl to give me the time of day.”

 _Especially now,_ He can't help but think, knowing what a deviant he is, knowing he'd choose again and again to come to Mr. Sakhar over any dame. Over the _church_ even.

“Sounds like you’ve been asking some mighty silly girls then, if they can’t even tell the time.” Mr. Sakhar just raises his brows innocently when Steve gives him a put upon look at his terrible joke. He's been getting steadily used to Mr. Sakhar's deadpan humor. “You just have to find the smart one’s Steve. The kind of girl who’ll see you for just how great you are.”

Steve smiles bitterly. “I’ve been told all my life that I’d die young. What kind of dame would want to be chained to that for the rest of her life? Live with the constant threat that at any moment my heart could just…give out. Make her a widow on her wedding night even.”

“Doctor’s don’t know everything, Steve. And the right dame wouldn't care anyway.” Mr. Sakhar says but then falls silent, moves a bit closer on the couch until their sides are pressed up against one another. Steve looks up, sees the honest hopeful look in his eyes, and can’t help but be confused.

“You almost seem like you _want_ me to get married,” Steve says. He hesitates before voicing his thoughts, worried Mr. Sakhar might take it the wrong way. “If I did…if I met someone and got _married,_ this whole…whatever this is, would—”

 _End_ , Steve thinks but doesn’t say. He doesn’t need to though, Mr. Sakhar understands.

“Everything ends, _motek sheli._ ” Mr. Sakhar says with a sad smile, and Steve wonders with a tilt of his head what the words mean. “One day you won’t need a patron anymore, and I will let you go, and cherish the memories I have made together. I have so few of them now, and I’ve learned to hold them all the closer for it.”

An intense wave of something passes over Steve at the thought of Mr. Sakhar letting him go, something Steve doesn't want to admit is _hurt._ He should want this to be temporary, he should want to get back on his feet, to not need help with the rent every month. Steve should want this to have an end.

But Steve _doesn't._

Steve thinks Mr. Sakhar is right to cherish the memories though, as he thinks about his mother smiling at him, kissing his forehead, making him cake. He’d give anything, everything, to see her again and make just one more memory with her.

“But you still haven’t answered my question.” Mr. Sakhar says with a playful smile. “You have time now to think about it. What do you want from life, Steve?”

“…s’pose…all I’ve ever really wanted is to not be a burden.” Steve mutters after a long thoughtful pause. “To pull my own weight, to…do something _good_ with my life, however short or long it is _._ ”

Mr. Sakhar reaches out and takes his hand, rubbing his thumb along Steve’s scarred knuckles. “I think you could have a chance of that through your art, don’t you?”

And Steve looks over to the corner, where his own penis is drawn in charcoal several times over and he laughs.

“You laugh, but you don’t see how happy your art has made me, how happy it could make so many others.” Mr. Sakhar admonishes, “You could make a real living off your art. I could set you up with a few of my contacts who’d be interested in commissioning you.”

“I don’t know…” Steve says, but he’s thinking about it seriously. It would mean he could give up his part-time ad work, the underpaid typesetting that always makes his eyes hurt from squinting. It's everything he'd never dared dream for, making a real name for himself in the industry...and Mr. Sakhar is offering it to him so easily. It almost rankles, the idea of taking more of his help, as if it would diminish his own success by taking his help.

But that's silly isn't it? Plenty of famous artists would never have gotten anywhere if not for their patron's, and it's not like Mr. Sakhar hasn't helped him plenty already. Steve thinks sometimes on where he'd be if he hadn't eaten that cake at Delmonico's, if he hadn't gone to Park Slope with a painting under his arm. The answers he comes up with are never good.

Is that really why he's hesitating though? His pride as an artist and a man?

So, after a long while deliberating on it, Steve swallows his pride and admits to himself that it's not accepting help that rankles...it's the idea that Mr. Sakhar is trying to get rid of him. Push him to get his art career going to the point where he doesn't need Mr. Sakhar to commission pieces from him, to make it so he 'no longer needs a patron' as he'd said before.

Maybe Mr. Sakhar wants this to end. Maybe he's getting tired of Steve already.

"Alright," Steve says finally, despite his misgivings. "I'll meet with your...contact."

"Wonderful." Mr. Sakhar says with a bright smile, and Steve tries not to feel like he's being told he's not needed anymore.

Besides...this is what he should want, to get as much as he can out of this relationship before it goes too far, to the point of no return.

—

His first commission is from a lovely elderly lady by the name of Mrs. Geller who he meets in a West Village apartment that she actually _owns_ somehow. Steve can't even imagine what a place like hers would cost to _buy_. Apparently her husband had been a rather well off professor before he died, though he forgets what he teaches almost as soon as she tells him. Something about bones or dinosaurs maybe?

She kisses Steve on both cheeks when she welcomes him in at the door, and then she sits with him and hands him what looks like an ancient cabinet card photo of a young couple. It takes him an embarrassing amount of looking back and forth between Mrs. Geller and the photo before he realizes it's _her_ in the cabinet card, alongside her tall gangly husband. He has a rather terrible mustache that Steve thinks wasn't in fashion even back when the photo was originally taken.

"Oh, we were such a striking couple weren't we?" She says with a bashful laugh. "I wish we'd had a painting done though. Those photographs just don't capture the soul. I look so _dour._ "

"I agree, ma'am." Is all Steve says, but then rapidly backtracks when he sees her narrowed eyes, "I mean, that paintings are better, not that you look dour, I would never—!"

"Alright, young man, I get it." She says with an amused look, "I was just teasing."

"Thank you, ma'am." Steve sighs nervously. "So, you want me to paint this photo then?"

"No, no," She says with a coy look in her eye as she giggles. "That's just for reference. I'd like you to paint us... _together_."

"...together?" Steve says slowly, not understanding. She raises one overplucked eyebrow at him as if he should understand without her saying anything.

"My but you're an innocent one aren't you?" She laughs finally, "I mean I'd like the sort of paint your patron has been commissioning from you. Mr...Sakhar, is it? What a funny name he chose. I much prefer his other one."

Steve's jaw drops, shocked both at the type of painting she wants and at the fact that she clearly knows Mr. Sakhar's real name. He leans forward with sharp eyes, intent on this old woman and her deceptively innocent smile. "You know his real name? What is it?"

With slyly narrowed eyes she says, "And what do I get if I tell you?"

With narrow eyes, Steve looks from her to the photo's holding. "I'll do this piece for free."

Mrs. Geller covers her mouth as she laughs at him, "Cheeky. If you really think that's a fair trade then I agree."

They shake on it, and Steve feels an instant thrill to think he'll soon know the name of his mystery obsessed patron, and that Mr. Sakhar will be none the wiser. He feels a smidgen of worry that knowing it will make the older man angry at him, that he'll feel as if Steve snooped but...

Steve sits up straight, clenching his jaw. If he's really being pushed away anyways, then what does it matter if Steve snoops? He thinks he deserves to know Mr. Sakhar's real name after all these months. He thinks he's earned that much at least.

Steve sits and has tea on her insistence and they talk about the specifics of what she wants in her commissioned piece. Steve finds himself leaving beat red and halfway to an asthma attack just from the sheer embarrassment of talking about such indecent things with a lady, and it's not helped at all by the fact that Mrs. Geller is very, _very_ open about what she wants. She laughs every time he stutters over some lewd phrasing, pinches his cheek like he's the cutest thing even as Steve tries desperately to avoid her fingers. When Steve marvels at how she can be so blaze she only says, "Sweetie, at my age you learn to stop caring so much about propriety."

Well, anyways, it’s an interesting job, and he likes Mrs. Geller and the crazy stories she tells him about her eclectic bohemian friends when he comes for a few follow up sittings. She wants her and her husband to be...fornicating on the couch, which she says was where they first made love, so Steve needs to take several reference sketches of the apartment. Steve rarely paints people from imagination rather than reality, and—considering he only has a fuzzy black and white photo of her and her husband when they were young, and the fact he's never seen a woman and a man in _that_ position outside of a few Tijuana bibles he'd once saw over the shoulders of the older boys at school—the painting requires _quite_ a bit of imagination to fill in the blanks.

He knows his color choices aren't going to be perfect, knows that people see things differently than he does, and he tells Mrs. Geller so. She seems more intrigued than anything by an artist with color blindness though, saying it "Makes it all the more unique!" and leaving it at that. When he shows up at her place a few weeks later he’s not so sure about the end result but she seems happy enough.

“It’s _perfect,_ dear,” She says, teary-eyed and smiling at him in a way that makes Steve feel instantly that all his embarrassment at painting it was worth it, “Just how I remember us. And the apartment looks lovely. Your color choices are...interesting, very interpretive, but I think I like it. Especially purple of the walls, it's more vibrant than in real life, but I think it captures the _feel_ of it more…oh. But you didn’t sign it?”

Steve hesitates, staring at the blank little corner of the painting, right beneath a young Mrs. Geller’s painted breast. “I, uh, forgot.”

Mrs. Geller gives him a severe look, over-plucked brows raised imperiously. Steve gets the feeling she sees right through his lie. “Well, you’d better do it right away then, hm? What if you get rich and famous one day? It’ll be worth nothing without a signature!”

“But the painting’s all sealed and I don’t have anything to—” Steve tries to protest, but Mrs. Geller is already bustling away and back again, pushing gold paint and a brush on him. “Oh.”

“Well? Chop, chop.”

Steve takes a deep breath, raising his brush. He hasn’t signed his name on any of the pieces that he’s done for Mr. Sakhar, and he hadn’t intended on signing Mrs. Gellers either. It feels too much like he’s signing away his soul.

Does he really want to put his full Christian name on this erotic scene? It isn’t exactly the kind of art he’d imagined he’d be doing when he made it his career. He can just imagine if one of the little old ladies from church ever saw it, recognized his name, and dropped dead from shock, saying all the while _What would your mother say, God rest her soul!_

He laughs a bit at his own ridiculous fancies. When would one of the church ladies ever see this painting?

...still…just in case…

With a shake of his head he sets brush to canvas, he signs _Grant Stephens_ in the corner in skillful sweeps of gold. There’s nothing to seal it here, but given the time to dry it won’t go anywhere for a long time.

“Grant Stephens? Hmm, I like it. A fine pseudonym. Better than Mr. Sakhar at any rate.” Mrs. Geller croons, pinching his cheeks.

"I appreciate that ma'am," Steve says and then clears his throat nervously, eagerly. "And...about my payment...?"

"Of course, of course..." She says slowly, puttering about and looking as if she has all the time in the world, "Oh, but you don't want some tea first?"

"No." Steve says, maybe too quickly and eagerly, by the look of amusement on her face. He clears his throat again. "I mean, no thank you, ma'am. Just the name if you could?"

"Alright, I've tortured you enough..." She giggles, pinching his cheek to his displeasure, "As far as I know, your Mr. Sakhar has always been my James. That's the name he gave me, that's the name I've known him by."

 _James..._ Steve says it in his own mind, wondering at just how...normal it sounds. It doesn't sound Russian, or even like any of the 'Jewish' names he's heard...it doesn't sound like it's the name he was born with. Steve turns narrowed eyes at Mrs. Geller then, who's smiling sweetly at him, and he goes over what she'd said in his mind. 

_"That's the name he gave me, that's the name I've known him by."_

"You don't know his real name any more than I do, do you?" Steve sighs, shoulders slumping.

Mrs. Geller shrugs, looking suddenly guilty. "It's the name he chose to give me, whether it's his _real_ name though...well. What makes a name real anyways?"

"Legal documents?" Steve says blandly and Mrs. Geller hits him on the arm with a faux annoyed look.

"If that were true I'd have to tell you to resign the painting you gave me, Mr. Stephens."

Steve just frowns at her and grumbles under his breath. "I can't believe I gave you that painting for _free."_

"Not for free, don't be silly." She says as she pulls out an envelope that makes Steve's eyes widen. "Did you really think I was going to let you give that painting to me for nothing? I'm not that heartless!"

"But...we had a deal, ma'am, I can't—"

"Nonsense! Take the money or I'll take it as a personal insult." She says as she forcibly slips the envelope into his pants pocket, making Steve flush beat red as she slips in a sneaky pinch to his bum. She winks at him.

“Now, you come back whenever you want for tea. You've made an old woman very happy, and I’ll certainly recommend you to all my friends, don’t you worry, _Grant Stephens._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone catch the Friends references? XD I just wrote 'Mrs. Geller' when I was thinking up a name for Steve's first commissioner and then I couldn't help myself sorry lol. Fear not though, Rachel and Ross are eventually reborn and meet and still have their happily ever afters via 90's sitcom. Next chapter we revisit modern steve and see how he's doing!


	4. First Watch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Look…Cap, I know you got this whole ' self-sacrificing Catholic’ thing goin’ for ya, and I get it, I do, I’m not much of a praying man myself y’know, but I get it.” Dum Dum says and does a mock crossing of himself that sets Rogers' eyes rolling, “But here’s the thing—even God took a day to rest, pal.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait guys! I just had this idea for a scene to add in to the beginning of the chapter and I couldn't help myself. Hopefully it doesn't feel too last minute! Reminder about that warning for slurs in this chapter btw, specifically slurs against Jewish people.

**1936**

_102 Prospect Park West, Brooklyn, NY_

The week after his successful meeting with Mrs. Geller, Steve gets beat up in an alley.

It’s not the first time he’s been popped in the kisser, definitely won’t be the last, but it is the first time it’s happened since his acquaintance with his mysterious patron whose name may or may not be James Sakhar.

For a moment Steve thinks about using the payphone at the corner diner to call to James’ residence and cancel their weekly engagement. He thinks of lying, saying he’s fallen ill again, but he knows that’ll just give James reason to send a doctor and then his lie will be found out.

 _Besides…_ Steve tells himself, _He’ll find out eventually. That this is how I am. Who I am._

That he's the sort that doesn’t run, doesn’t back down. The sort of man that stands and fights, even despite the fact that he knows he likely won't win.

So Steve straightens his shoulders and squares his jaw and heads to Park Slope with defiance written in the lines of his face. Even with his bloodied lip and nose, even with his bruised ribs, Steve knows he did right by standing against those back alley bullies. He’d do it all over again if he had to, no matter how many black eyes or ugly broken noses it gives him.

He thinks suddenly of his mother, looking at him with that severe disappointment of her when he came in the door with a tense jaw and bloodied fists. How she'd cry and yell and tell him he would give his poor mother a heart attack one day. He wonders, standing with fist frozen mid knock, how James will react.

Will he be angry at the shirt he'd given Steve, now stained with blood and dirt? Disgusted that Steve had debased himself with such unruly behavior as a _fight?_ Rich people were like that, weren't they? Always thinking themselves above the plebians that fought with their fists rather than their words. He's reminded suddenly that James has never come to Steve, it's always Steve coming to _him._ Even when he's sick in bed, James doesn't come to his terrible little hovel but rather sends someone else to check on him.

 _Because people would_ _talk,_ the voice of reason says in Steve's mind, _because he isn't sure you'd welcome him there, outside of these meetings._

Despite the logic of the words, Steve can't bring himself to let go of the doubt he feels. 

Steve fingers the bloodied shirt he wears, and wonders; does James buy him such things for Steve or for himself? Maybe he just doesn't want to be out in public with Steve if he looks as poor as he really is. The thought brings a twisted sort of bitterness, a hurt pride he hadn't thought to feel before. Suddenly he feels a rush of embarrassment at just how happy the new shoes and clothes had made him, thinking James was giving them to him because he _cared._

A small part of him knows he's being ridiculous for thinking of Mr. Sakhar, _James,_ as being so underhanded but...well, they've only known each other for a few months. How well does Steve _really_ know him?

If _Mr. Sakhar_ doesn’t like the look of him like this, then so be it, Steve decides, placing knuckles to door in a forceful knock.

Steve won’t care if he says ‘no fighting or this is over.’ He won’t. He’ll turn around and say 'then this is over,' and he'll be fine with that. He'll go back to his tiny room and sell all the nice clothes and shoes and everything James has given him and he'll go back to how things were before he met him and he'll be _fine_ _._

Why should he care if he's turned away? After all, he obviously doesn’t care enough about Steve to tell him his real name, so why should Steve care if they part ways? He's just with him because it helps pay the bills, this is a _transactional_ relationship, Steve reminds himself and instantly flinches away from the lie even as he tries to convince himself it's the truth.

Despite his own unconvincing thoughts, Steve still feels his stomach drop with nerves when the door opens and he looks up through his one good eye to see James standing there with a smile. It only gets worse when said smile instantly falls, replaced by a dark look that makes Steve shiver.

It’s always a surprise when Steve sees it, that little hint of something dark that sometimes swallows James’ face whole. It comes when a loud noise interrupts a quiet still moment, or when someone shoulders into James’ unexpectedly on a crowded street. It's a sort of tense and coiled readiness that's quick to come and slow to go, and always it leaves Steve wanting with curiosity and a shameful sort of heat.

“Who did this to you?” James asks and Steve has to look away from his eyes so he doesn't say something he'll regret.

“Don’t know their names.” Steve huffs, with a little smile at the irony. After all, the man standing in front of him now has that in common with them. “Just some jerks who had a mind to put their hands on a lady in places they weren’t invited to.”

“And you, her knight in shining armor,” James says, his look turning into something a little gentler, a little more _heated_. “Did she offer to _thank you,_ for your services?”

“ _No.”_ Steve says, startled at the implication and instantly flushed and self-conscious. “She ran off soon as I came along. Besides, a girl like her wouldn’t look twice at a guy like me.”

“A girl like her would be an idiot then,” James says, and Steve feels the tension he’d been carrying since he left the house slowly ease at the gentle teasing in his voice. He feels suddenly foolish for his wild imaginings from before, thinking that he might be turned away for showing up black and blue on his doorstep.

He follows James into the sitting room, watching him thoughtfully as he slowly gets used to calling him by his new name in his mind.

_James._

He's surprised by how easy it seems to fit him, despite the fact that _surely_ it couldn’t be the one he’d been born with. It didn’t sound at all Russian or Jewish, though to be fair Steve doesn’t have much personal experience with meeting either to make such a judgment.

Steve wants to call him James now, to test his reaction to the name. He wants to force the man into some sort of admission of truth, to find out whether it’s his real name or just another pseudonym…but the words don’t leave his lips. Because something inside of Steve wants the other man to be the one to say it, to trust him enough to tell him on his own.

Until then…well, Steve will call him Mr. Sakhar to his face, and James only within his own mind.

Steve, despite himself, lets James fuss over him. Lets him patch his face up and rub ointment into his knuckles. He feels vaguely overwhelmed by it, considering he hasn’t had someone to patch him up since his ma died. Steve hadn’t wanted to know how James would react to this part of him, the part that’s so clearly different from the version of himself that Steve usually presents when he’s with him; the soft-hearted artist with a penchant for knitting and long deep conversations.

Most people are shocked when they see him stand up with clenched fists against some back alley jerks. Most people laugh when they see his beat-up face days later, jokingly saying _‘I should like to see the other guy,’_ in a way that suggests Steve’s the one that came out worse. 

Steve’s used to that though, can easily shrug off such things. What he could never stand though, was how his mother would get when she saw him like this, before she died. She’d get so _hurt…_ it made Steve feel like an absolute heel, for upsetting her like that. He’d rather she have gotten angry. He’d rather _James_ be angry, then look at him with that terrible disappointment in his eyes.

“You’re being quiet,” Steve says as James puts away his first aid kit. “Are you angry with me, then?”

“Why would I be angry?” James says, looking at him with a strange curious intensity. Steve has to look away, down to where he fiddles with his blood-stained shirt.

“Messed up the shirt y’got me,” Steve mumbles with apprehension and just a sliver of legitimate sadness. He can’t regret getting in that fight, but he can regret that it ruined something so fine. A waste of a good shirt.

It’d been a struggle coming to terms with the expensive gifts James often gave him, clothing and art supplies and new shoes he didn’t have to stuff with newspaper to get them to fit right…but once he had, Steve found it impossible to not want them with a sinful amount of avarice. He remembers the first thing James had given him, a woolen jacket to replace the hole-ridden one he'd had before...he remembers with shame how he'd held it to his skin in the privacy of his room, naked with want he couldn't admit to.

Even now, thinking that James has been dressing him up as one would a doll on a shelf, Steve can't help but covet the things James has given him. The thought of giving them up should this end is more painful than it should be. Steve tries not to think too much about why it would be so painful, in part because he already knows the answer isn't because he would miss the _things,_ but rather because he'd miss the one who gave them to him.

“I’ll get you a new one,” James says with a half-smile as he flicks the blood-stained collar at Steve’s neck.

"I'm sure the neighbors will talk." Steve presses, needing something, an answer to a question he hasn't asked, for reasons he can't quite understand.

"You know I don't give a hoot about the damned neighbors." James scoffs, looking at him strangely now, as if he's realized that Steve is pressing for something but unsure of what it is.

 _That makes two of us,_ Steve thinks, aching with too many emotions and too little understanding.

“Then there’s my face. ‘m not much to look at even in my best moments, but I’m sure I look a right mess now. Pretty sure my nose ain’t gonna be straight ever again, that’s for sure.”

“ _Steve.”_ James says in warning, just like he always does when Steve says something he dislikes. “You know I hate it when you talk like that.”

Steve just shrugs. He does know. That doesn’t make him any less sure that it’s the truth, and he says as much.

"It's _not_ true." James says forcefully and it should make Steve feel better, but if anything it just makes him bristle _more._

"Not to you, I suppose. Which makes my face being beat in all the worse." He says bitterly. "What use am I if I'm not something nice to look at, right? That's why I'm here, isn't it?"

"I want you here because I enjoy your company—"

" _Really?_ Enjoy my company?" Steve is surprised by the depth of strange emotion in his own voice, the doubt and sharp anger of it. "Enjoy it like a doll on a shelf, to be dressed up to your liking and taken out to play with when you like, so long as I don't act out of line, outside the script you set for me—"

"What is this?" James interrupted sharply, standing and pacing away from Steve, hands abruptly dragging over his own face, "What are you looking for here? Do you _want_ me to be angry with you?"

Steve says nothing, jaw clenched as he stares doggedly at the wall over James' shoulder. He doesn't know what he's looking for here, doesn't know what he's doing at all. 

"You're not a _doll."_ James hisses out finally, turning back towards him. "I would _never_ think of you like that, some _thing_ to be used like I—"

The words choke off before he can say more, and the hurt in James' voice makes Steve flinch. When James crosses the distance between them Steve sways towards before he can help it. He near slumps into the warmth of his hand when James' puts it against his cheek, feeling off-balance and uncertain of everything.

"What have I done to make you think these things?" James says, and there's no anger in his voice like Steve had expected there to be. Instead, there's _fear_ , and it drains Steve of the last of his own doubt and fills it instead with regret over his own temper.

"You...you haven't I just—"

"I would not have you do anything you don't want to here, Steve, do you understand?" James says, and the look in his eyes holds a strange desperation. "You can leave whenever you want, you can _end_ this whenever you want."

"I...I know that. I know I can." Steve says.

Then he thinks, _but_ _so can you, that's the problem._

"I'm sorry." He whispers, "I'm just...it's been a rough day."

James sighs, his thumb brushing up and down over Steve's jaw, where a dark bruise has begun to show itself. "I should get you some ice for this..."

“Don't." Steve says and holds fast to James's hand when he goes to move away. He flushes in embarrassment at just how pathetic the action must look.

James doesn't say anything about it though, just keeps his hand where it is, looking at him in that soft way he always does. It makes fear grip Steve's stomach, makes him want to go out and punch something, some _one_ , and he doesn't know why.

"...I figured you’d at least yell at me for not runnin’ the other way once the girl got away.” Steve finds himself mumbling, unable to help himself from pushing. "No reason to stick around for a fight I know I'll lose."

“I of all people know that running gets you nowhere…and once you start, it’s hard to stop.” James whispers, clenching his jaw and shaking off whatever dark memory has taken root in his mind. “I’m not angry, Steve, not at you. You can't make me angry at you either, whatever reasons you have for wanting it. I’m angry at the men who did this to you, at the world itself for being so cruel. I’m angry that you had no one at your back. I’m angry at the thought that this could have been so very, _very_ worse.”

James sighs, hand moving to the back of his neck to grip in that way that makes Steve feel pathetically small and wonderfully safe all at once. “You didn't...'act out of line.' I don't have a...a _script_ for you, Steve. I just want you to be yourself."

Steve again feels that deep regret choke him, feels foolish and small and terribly stupid for letting his doubt and his temper get the best of him. And yet, still, that fear remains inside him, only compounded by this incident, and he can't help but tighten his grip about James' wrist lest he try to pull away.

"You did what you thought was _right_. It’s what I like about you, a strength that even men twice your size fail to have even with their straight backs and their strong arms…a strength of _character._ ”

“I think I’d prefer a little more _physical_ strength to be honest,” Steve says wryly.

“No,” James says with a troubled expression. "You wouldn't. Not really."

“I’d lose less at least.” Steve frowns, “I could really help people if I were—“

“You don’t need to be six foot two and solid muscle to help people Steve.” James says, and then sighs at whatever expression he sees on Steve’s face. “That’s not a pretext to asking you not to fight, you stubborn punk _._ I’m just saying…you’re a good man. You do plenty just being Steve Rogers.”

James leans down and kisses him then, and Steve sighs into it, more and more used to the feel of it every week. When he pulls back there’s a devilish grin on James face. “Would if I were younger, I’d be right there at your back, fighting alongside you.”

The change of subject is a welcome reprieve from the tension in the room, and Steve's grip on James' wrist relaxes some.

“Really?” Steve laughs, eyes raking James' figure up and down, from his fancy wingtip shoes to his and perfectly pomade slicked hair. He thinks fondly of the time it’d started raining while they were out and James had insisted they take a route that added nearly half an hour to their commute home, just because the shorter way had more puddles. “I can’t imagine you wanting to get those fancy shoes all scuffed up in some back alley.”

James just chuckles lowly, a strange light entering his eyes, something both prideful and shamed. “Oh, Steve, if only you knew. I'm sure you know of Brownsville? It's where we first settled when we came to America...”

Steve nods, only vaguely surprised. Cramped and overcrowded with terrible infrastructure and little access to the city, Brownsville is rather well known as being a rough part of town on the outskirts of Brooklyn. It’s not the sort of place he would associate with a man of Mr. Sakhar’s obvious standing, but it makes a sense the longer he thinks on it. Brownsville is known for housing a large percentage of Jews after all, and even more so—Russian Jews.

“We were out, Natanya and I and our son, my little Yuri. Just taking a walk on one of the few days we all had the time and inclination to go together…and then there was this man that stumbled out of a nearby bar—prohibition hadn’t come about yet so bars were still on every block then—and he was drunk and dressed too fine to be a local, hollering with his pals and harassing the gals that passed. You know the type.”

Steve’s face darkens. He most certainly does know the type, the kind of men who come to the seedier parts of town waving their money around, finding it fun to laugh at the less fortunate. “I’m guessing he said somethin’ real stupid.”

“Oh, yeah. Real stupid. But the worst of it is? He didn’t say it to me, he said it to my _son._ Turned to his pals and said _I guess even jew babies look cute before they grow into their noses, you can’t even tell the little tike’s a kike yet._ And they all laughed and _laughed.”_

 _“…_ Jesus _,”_ Is all Steve can manage without being vulgar, face flushing with empathetic anger. His fists clench within James’ hands before he can help it, and he sees his lips turn up to see it. “I hope you gave him a black eye for saying that.”

“Better. I beat his mouth in so good he lost three teeth, and then shoved him into one of the horse shit piles on the side of the road. Dirtied all his pretty clothes right up.” James says with a wolfish grin, “And then I said, _I guess even rich fucks look like shit when they’re covered in it. Can’t even tell you’re any different than us ‘kike’s’ now, and isn’t that funny?_ Never saw that fucker in Brownsville again. _”_

 _“_ Well that’s…crude, but I s'pose it got the point across.”

James pulls him close again as Steve tries hard to fight a guilty grin, “Point is, Steve, point is I’m not your mother, nor your keeper. I’m not going to tell you it’s wrong to fight or be disappointed in you for getting into trouble. Your not some fragile doll to be kept on a shelf looking pretty, only taken down for special occasions.”

James takes one of Steve’s hands, tracing the bleeding knuckles and smiling grimly when Steve hisses and tries to pull away. "Truthfully, to think that you can make such beauty with these hands…and then turn around and use them to give so much pain…I find it to be the exact _opposite_ of a disappointment.”

Lips press to his knuckles and Steve shudders at the wrongness of it, knowing that blood is getting on James’s lips and caring not at all. He feels for once like they’re on even ground, that they’re both looking at the most base parts of one another, seeing each other for the first time all over again.

“Does that frighten you?” James asks, his mouth brushing sparks of pain along his knuckles as he speaks. “Do _I_ frighten you?”

“…yes.” Steve whispers, _a confession,_ and it’s true. He is frightened by James, frightened by the way he makes Steve feel, the power he’s beginning to hold over him, frightened of the end of this.

 _Everything ends, motek..._ He remembers James saying, and suddenly it’s too much, too hard to contain the words and shameful thoughts he’s been holding in for so long.

“It’s…this is… _” Wrong,_ Steve doesn’t say, but by the look on James’ face, he thinks he hears it in the pause. “I shouldn’t like it. Shouldn't like this.”

“A selfless man would agree with you, would send you on your way, tell you to stop fighting so much, tell you to find that wife, have a few children, build the normal life you deserve,” James says, unblinking, never looking away from Steve. There’s that something dark there again, a blade held handle first, ready to be grasped. “But then, I’ve never been one for selflessness, Steve Rogers.”

Steve can’t help but feel a swell of relief at the words, even as he knows he should feel the opposite. And, for perhaps the first time, Steve is the one to really initiate a kiss, leaning forward with a fierce possessiveness that startles them both. James’ mouth is soft under his own, tempered by the roughness of his beard scraping against Steve’s skin like a brand. He feels more alive and centered in his own body than he ever has before. He feels _himself_ in a way he’s only ever gotten close to when he’s fighting with bloodied fists against those that deserve it.

He feels in that moment, kissing James’ with a fervor that frightens him, that maybe it’s okay to be just as he is, that maybe just being Steve Rogers is enough.

—

**2011**

_102 Prospect Park West, Brooklyn, NY_

Steve walks around the Park Slope apartment in a daze, dragging dusty sheets off of furniture as he goes. Fallen white fabric is left on the ground in his wake, a trail leading from room to room.

The chairs and couch that he exposes are ugly post-modernist things with sharp edges and awful mustard-like colors. Steve remembers a soft velvet chaise and plush lounge chairs in deep purple, and he wonders where they went, if they’re broken and abandoned in some landfill, or if they were sold to someone that uses them and cares for them even now.

When he reaches the kitchen he stops with a pang of hurt to see it so changed. Gone are the pastel colors and the outdated appliances, and in their place are their likely much better modern equivalents.

Steve trails his hand over what looks like a toaster, all sleek unobtrusive design and shiny metal, and remembers ornately designed metal that burned the hand if you touched it while it was on.

_This here is an electric toaster, isn’t it marvelous? I haven’t had a slice of burnt toast in ages with this thing._

The counters are original marble, but the cabinets are all closed wooden things rather than the open glass Steve remembers. It’s only when Steve pulls on the metal handle on one of the chrome doors under the counter and sees all the strange prongs inside of it that he slowly realizes it’s a _dishwasher._

_And this, this is an automatic dishwasher. I bought into a prototype when the company first introduced it, but unfortunately then the stock market crashed in 1929, and they stopped production…_

The stove is larger, cleaner, and, like the toaster, is shiny simple chrome. The fridge is the same, _chrome._ The trashcan? Chrome. The dishwasher under the counter? _Chrome_.

Steve wonders suddenly, wildly, what Tony’s kitchen looks like, whether it's painted in Iron Man colors or if it’s just as boring and colorless as this one. He finds he can’t handle being in the kitchen with all its changes and goes to sit in the dining space instead, staring up at the painting he’d done of the man he’d loved and lost.

It’s been so long since he’s seen his face, he’s shamed to realize he’d forgotten the shape of his mouth when he smiled, the laughter lines around his eyes. Looking at the painting, he wonders now if his eyes really had been grey, or if Steve’s issues seeing color before the serum tainted that part of him.

He’ll never get an answer now. He’ll never know the real color of his eyes.

Steve wants to look away, but he forces himself not to. Forces himself to walk the perimeter of the house for a second time. The place is nearly four stories, and he marvels all over again at the size of it, despite its narrowness. Steve doesn’t know much about the housing market but he doesn’t understand how the bank couldn’t have sold this place immediately. From what he’d seen, Park Slope has only grown richer since the days when Steve knew it.

Maybe they were hoping to break the place up into smaller units, maybe they just couldn’t sell it without updating its outdated kitchen first…Steve supposes he’ll never know.

After all the sheets have been stripped from the furniture and gathered into a single giant bundle, Steve sits and stares out the third floor’s oval window, a view of Prospect Park he’d always loved. The ghost of an arm wrapping around him from behind makes him shiver.

In the quiet of the apartment, Steve’s stomach growls and he realizes he’s suddenly, intensely, hungry. Since the serum, he’s always hungry to a degree, but this hunger is a different kind than usual. It’s a craving for sweetness on the tip of his tongue, a scent at the back of his nose, a near physical memory making his mouth water and his chest tight.

A protein shake would satisfy the hunger, fruit would satisfy the craving for something sweet, or maybe one of those protein bars SHIELD gave him that has those too-sweet chocolate chips on the top. It would be enough for Captain America. He’d eat a bar or drink a shake and then head back out there, rejoin the people of New York in their struggle to find their loved ones, to clean up the destruction wrought on their city by aliens of all things.

But _Steve…_ he doesn’t want any of those things. He doesn’t want chalky chocolate shakes or gritty protein bars or even mealy apples…more than anything, what Steve wants a slice of _chocolate cake._

Steve looks to the side, where his things from the hotel he’d been staying at are piled in the corner—brought by Natasha before she even brought him here no doubt. He eyes the edge of his shield gleaming in the evening sun, and he thinks about all the work that still needs to be done to clean up New York.

People are still out there, combing through the rubble, looking for the dead, the injured, the survivors. And here Steve is, sitting in a house he didn’t work for, a place that’s likely worth millions of dollars, thinking about how much he wants _chocolate cake._

_“Don’t think we haven’t noticed you taking three or four shifts a night for us, Cap.” Dum Dum says as he slaps him on the shoulder hard enough to bowl a regular man right over. It’s not startling, but only because very little startles Captain Rogers anymore. “Let me take first shift this time around. In fact, take the last shift. We’ll wake you when we’ve all had a go.”_

_“I’m fine, Dum Dum, really. Or did you miss the part where I scouted ahead for us all day without breaking a sweat?”_

_“Yeah, yeah, we get it Cap you’re fast.” Dum Dum rolls his eyes and pokes his Captain in the side with his boot pointedly. “But just because you can go running back and forth like a man on two hours of sleep don’t mean you have to, or that ya should. Every man needs a break once in a while, or our bodies take that break for us.”_

_“I don’t need as much sleep as regular men anymore. You all need the rest more than me.”_

_“I think them raccoon eyes you’ve been sportin’ would say otherwise. Look…Cap, I know you got this whole ' self-sacrificing Catholic’ thing goin’ for ya, and I get it, I do, I’m not much of a praying man myself y’know, but I get it.” Dum Dum says and does a mock crossing of himself that sets Rogers' eyes rolling, “But here’s the thing—even God took a day to rest, pal.”_

_“Alright, alright, you’ve made your point Dum Dum. I’ll take the dang last watch if it’ll keep you from spouting nonsense.”_

_“I’m not just talkin’ about the night watches. It’s everything.”_

_“…I’m not sure what you’re aiming at here. We’re in the middle of a war, Dum Dum, there’s no time for afternoon tea and sandwiches, no matter what Falsworth says.”_

_“Just a thought, Captain. The next town is two miles. I heard the town hasn’t been much touched by the war yet…”_

_“I know. It’s exactly for that reason it’s a strategic point to resupply at.”_

_“…my point is, Cap, that they’ll probably be gals there that’d like the sight of a man in uniform, and good food too, and maybe even some of them fancy sweet wines or pastries like the ones Dernier’s always yammerin’ on about…”_

_“…and if there is?”_

_“Well, if there is, just…stick around a bit, is all. Put your feet up, have some cake. Maybe don’t go lookin’ for supplies right off the bat, maybe let one of the guys take that on for you. I know you don’t like to put that shield of yours down much, but maybe every once in a while you can trust us to watch your back while you take a load off, huh? All I’m saying is…well. Let us take first watch once in a while, is all.”_

Steve blinks back to himself as he realizes he’s sitting in a dim room, watching as the sun’s last few rays turn Prospect Park orange and red.

 _Sun’s gone down,_ Steve thinks hesitantly, _time for first watch._

Before he knows it he’s left the apartment, locking it behind him with the little key Natasha had left on the table. His suit is left upstairs, his shield still laying on the floor, along with the photostatic veil and the terrible wig. He has no idea what’s in the area so he heads back the way he came, bare-faced and feeling naked and vulnerable, and finds the place named P&E Grocery that he’d spotted earlier.

It’s dark out now, but inside is brightly lit, like a beacon of light. Steve has to blink several times before he adjusts to the sheer vibrancy of the colors, the signs, the people. It’s full of things cans and boxes labeled with words Steve doesn’t recognize or understand, touting spices he’s never heard of. Steve picks up a gallon of milk that says ‘Skim’ and thinks _why are they selling hog slop for the same price as normal milk?_

Steve’s always hated food shopping but now he’s more eager to be out of the too bright, too strange grocery store than he ever has been before. SHIELD had done all his shopping for him, before, and any food he’d eaten was pre-made in their mess hall.

He walks the aisles in a haze of overwhelmed confusion until someone stops him with concerned eyes. It’s a young woman, looking hardly older than seventeen, with dark brown hair and big green eyes.

“You alright?” She says, “You look a little…lost.”

He blinks over at the small woman looking at him with worry, and the fuzz in his brain clears at the sound of the familiar New Yorker accent he grew up with, that old sound of home and Brooklyn. He hasn’t heard it much, since coming to in the new century, even from people who say they were born and raised in the city, and he's startled at the longing the sound of it awakens in him.

“You’ve been standing and staring at the dairy section for like, five minutes.”

“Oh.” Steve says in surprise. Had it really been that long?

“…look, sorry, we really can’t have you holding the door open like that. Food will defrost, y'know?” She says, sounding nervous as she comes closer and lightly presses at the open fridge door Steve’s holding. Immediately he lets it go, flushing with embarrassment.

“Right. Right of course, sorry.” He mumbles and realizes as he looks at the dame—young woman—that she has the store’s logo printed on her shirt. “I’ve…never been in this store. I don’t know where anything is. I’m looking for…things to make chocolate cake?”

She gives him a helpful but neutral smile then that every person who's worked retail knows. “Of course, I’ll show you our baking aisle. Follow me, sir.”

She takes him to a row of shelved goods with a sign about it that says ‘baking’, which makes Steve feel rather silly for not finding it sooner. “Here y’go. Everything you need to make cake should be here ‘cept the eggs, and you already have the milk so…”

Steve gives her a thank you and an appreciative smile automatically, and then he stands in muted horror as he looks down at the sheer selection of different types of _flour._

Steve hadn’t known there could be that many types of flour. He thought there was just white and whole wheat, but no, now there’s bread flour and cake flour and semolina flour and—

“Have you ever even _made_ cake?” The woman says with an amused look. Steve looks at her with miserable eyes that probably answer her question for him.

“…why are there so many types of flour?” He asks before he can help it, which just makes her snort.

“Here.” She says, moving down the aisle to take something off a shelve. When she gets back she’s holding a box that makes Steve’s eyes light up.

Gladly, Steve takes the box from her, admiring the full-color picture of a slice of chocolate cake on it, looking at it like it’s the holy grail.

“Boxed cake, how neat,” He says with a grateful smile, ignoring the bemused expression on the woman's face as he reads the directions.

S _eems easy enough._ He thinks with a relieved sigh.

He puts the box in his cart and is about to turn to leave when he sees a row of little bags, each with a stunningly crisp and bright photo—Steve’s still not used to how detailed and colorful photographs are now—of a cookie on the front.

_“C’mon. Sugar cookies are easy, even you can’t mess it up doll.”_

He wavers back and forth for a moment, but in the end, he grabs the 'Sugar Cookie' labeled bag and throws it into his cart. He’s about to turn and go get the eggs, when he realizes that the helpful grocery store assistant is still hovering nearby, giving him a strange look.

“Um…” Steve racks his mind for something normal to say. What do normal people say in a situation like this? “Thanks for helping me find these, ma’am. It was a real help. I was kinda…overwhelmed, to be honest. It’s just…been a long day.”

“First responder?” She says, and Steve blinks at her in confusion. “Sorry, I just assumed…because of your clothes?”

Steve looks down at himself, realizing suddenly what she means. He’s covered in dust and debris, his black t-shirt nearly grey with it. He looks like he just left a construction site, or maybe a war zone. Technically he supposes it could be considered both. He must have been getting strange looks the whole ride from the city to Brooklyn, and he just hadn’t noticed…and of course, Natasha hadn’t said anything. She’d probably thought it was amusing more than anything.

“Yeah.” Steve finally answers hoarsely and then stares in horror as the woman’s eyes fill with tears. "Oh, I, um—"

“Sorry, sorry, just—thank you. For what you’re doing, y'know?” She laughs a little as she wipes at her eyes. “It’s just my ma and my brother was in the city, y’know? When the… _attack_ happened. They haven’t found them yet and...and neither of 'em have answered their phone since it happened and I can’t take time off, not without losing my job and I _can’t_ lose this job and—“

“Hey, _hey—“_ Steve says, reaching out across his cart to put a hand on her shoulder. He looks around for prying eyes but thankfully finds none. They’re alone in the aisle. “What’s your name, ma’am?”

“God, you’re old fashioned aren’t you? _Ma’am._ ” She laughs with a little hiccup, “The name's Rebecca Barnes. But…just call me Becca, please.”

“Nice to meet you Becca. I’m…I’m Grant.” Steve says with a frown, knowing he should avoid the attention his real name would bring without the veil on. “Grant Stephens.”

Silence falls, and he’s struck suddenly with the knowledge of just how little he can do to reassure this young woman without outright lying. _It’ll be alright,_ he could say, _I’m sure you're family's fine._

But he doesn’t know that. Her brother could be dead, her mother too, and saying otherwise would only make it more painful for her when it turns out not to be true.

“I’m…sorry, about your family—”

“No, _I’m_ sorry, crying like this. You’ve been out there all day, helping people, and here I am holding you up from getting your groceries after all that…” She says with a sniff as she turns away from him to wipe beneath her eyes. Steve looks on helplessly, wanting somehow to go back in time and prevent Loki from ever opening that damn portal. If only he’d been faster if only they’d worked together as a team faster…

“You should go get your eggs. There’s a sale on them right now, 2 dozen for 2.50.” Becca says quietly, and Steve only just hides his flinch at the amount, still not used to the inflated prices of things. That would’ve paid for his whole grocery bill once upon a time.

Steve grabs his cart, shuffling around her, but hesitates before he moves on. Becca looks at him, smiling sadly and with a bit of embarrassment in her red eyes.

“…I'm sure they'll find them,” Steve says, and only just holds himself back from telling her _he’ll_ find him. Because this is New York, and the sheer odds of Steve finding one random man and woman among all the thousands hurt or lost or dead is astronomical.

“I know. Dead or alive, they'll find them eventually."

The words are dark, and Steve's heart goes out to her, this young woman that's keeping it together despite everything. He can't help but reach out then and squeeze her shoulder, and it seems like it’s the right response because Becca’s face softens as she nods at him. 

"Sorry, that was a little dark wasn't it? I should be more positive." She sniffs a laugh.

"Everyone deals with these things differently..." Is all Steve says, and it she nods again as his hand leaves her shoulder.

"Hey—Grant? Thank you, for…not giving me the usual shtick, y’know? I’ve heard a lotta that today and I just…yeah. I just wish I could do more, like…like you are, I guess.”

Steve ducks his head, that old familiar guilt starting to burn the back of his throat. He looks down at the chocolate cake box in his bag and suddenly regrets buying it. “I’m nobody special, just a guy doing my best to do my part.”

“No. Everyone out there, the volunteers and the medics and the firefighters, all of you…you’re the real heroes.” She says sternly, her accent deepening the more wound up she gets. “Not those tight wearin’ suit flying schmucks that everyone’s obsessing over right now, but _you._ The people on the ground, who didn’t just walk away after like the city is all fine and dandy now that the battle is over. _”_

Steve tries to keep his smile from looking pained and awkward, unsure of how to respond. He is one of those tight wearing schmucks after all…and the chocolate cake mix in his cart is like a stab of guilt every time he looks at it. Still, he looks at Becca and her honest admiration and obvious good heart, and his smile gets a little more real.

“You’re just as much a hero as I am, Becca Barnes, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” Steve says seriously.

She laughs a little, and her smile wrenches at Steve’s chest with a strange familiarity. “Yeah, little ol’ me, ringing up people’s groceries all day, what a hero.”

“I mean it,” Steve says seriously. “You don’t need to be lifting beams off people or running around saving lives to be a hero. Sometimes it’s the little things that do the most…like helping an idiot like me find their groceries.”

Becca smiles at him again, that pretty, wide, familiar smile that Steve just can’t quite place. “That’s true. My brother always did say I’m good at helping idiots…I had to be, growing up with him.”

She doesn’t sound sad when she says it, and Steve finds the strength in her eyes as inspiring as it is guilt-inducing.

“You from around here?” She says curiously, “It’s just…the longer we talk the more you sound like you grew up in Brooklyn.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, startled. He hadn’t even realized he’d been slipping back into bad habits—

 _No, not bad habits,_ he reminds himself, _just old ones._

He’d gotten so used to people telling him during his stint as a show pony selling war bonds that his accent was a ‘poor man’s accent’ that didn’t ‘represent the American ideal.’ At some point, Steve’s ashamed to admit, he’d begun to believe it too. But hearing Becca’s unashamedly Brooklyn accent sounds like home in a world that’s so often strange and alien…he can’t even imagine thinking it’s a bad thing.

 _God,_ but it feels good to let himself talk like _Steve_ again.

"Flatbush." Steve says with a smile and she makes an impressed sound.

"Fancy." She says and Steve laughs a bit because it most certainly hadn't been fancy when he grew up there. 

Steve heads towards the cashiers, leaving Becca to her work, feeling lighter and heavier all at once.

He hadn’t thought it would be so jarring to get groceries of all things, but apparently the future knows how to make even the simplest things complicated and overwhelming. Standing on line waiting to pay, he because increasingly aware of the eyes that are on him, and he tenses. Do they recognize him? Had he made a mistake leaving behind the photostatic veil and terrible wig?

Steve looks up to find the cashier giving him a curious look when he tentatively puts his groceries on the black table and startles as it jerks forward and starts moving towards her, like the conveyer belt in a Ford car factory Steve had toured once. He feels like some country bumpkin, come to see the sights of the big city, gawking at all the fancy city sights…only it’s not fancy, not to anyone but him.

When Steve gets back to the Park Slope apartment, he’s weirdly surprised to find it just the same as he left it. Some part of him keeps expecting the place to look like it had in 1941 every time he walks through the door. He sets the groceries on the table, puts away the milk and the eggs and the other perishables he’d bought…and then he looks towards the photostatic veil laying on the dining table.

Right now there are people out there, trapped and dying unnoticed under toppled buildings, people crying and worrying for missing loved ones, lost in the chaos of a disaster. New York needs all the help it can get, Steve knows, and speaking with Becca had only reminded him of that fact.

He reminds himself that he doesn’t need to be Captain America to help people, he never had. Sometimes the best sort of hero was found in the ordinary. The grocers like Becca Barnes, the nobodies like ‘Grant Stephens.' Steve Rogers had once been a nobody. Just some punk from Brooklyn with too many morals and too much stubbornness...

It reminds Steve of knitting hats to put in the church boxes, of buying extra food for the unfortunate with the money he could have used to buy new shiny things for himself. It reminds him of being beaten up in back alleys for standing up for what he thought was right, all the bruised knuckles and split lips he’d gotten from a refusal to run away, to back down.

It makes him remember rough hands wiping his face clean of blood, and gentle eyes looking at him with fierce pride and longing.

_“I think I’d prefer a little more physical strength to be honest.”_

_“You don’t need to be six foot two and solid muscle to help people Steve..."_

_"You do plenty just being Steve Rogers.”_

Steve thinks of those words now, forgotten to time and grief, and almost laughs. It’s exactly what he is now, exactly what he’d sought to become despite it all. He’d thought that the only way to truly be useful, helpful, was to be Captain America…but he’d forgotten himself, forgotten that Steve Rogers had always helped people even before the serum and the costume and everything in between.

Now that he has that strength...he's reminded that he should be using it, taking advantage of the miracle of the serum, to do good, to _help_ _people._ Otherwise...what was the point of it all?

He leaves the boxed cake on the counter, puts on the veil, and is out the door before he can think better of it, heading in to help once more with the relief effort in Manhattan. Because it’s the right thing to do, because there is no one to take first watch for Steve, not right now.

The cake can wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: I didn't grow up in ny but my ma did, and she always says she's going to stand 'on line' rather than 'in line.' No clue if 1930's new yorkers said this but whatever I thought I'd add it in for Steve anyway lol.


	5. Olympia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Nothing stands still forever, Steve. The world is forever moving."
> 
> "Not always forward, though." Steve had argued with a frown, and James had had no answer to that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back to the past again! Bit of a short chapter this time, so I don't have much to say. Hope you like it! :0

**1936**

_Brooklyn, NY_

It doesn’t take long for the kisses to become more and more common, after that day Steve kissed James of his own volition with split lips. James kisses him when he arrives and when he leaves, then he starts kissing him halfway through the dessert to taste a bit of this or that on his lips, then he kisses him just to kiss him.

It’s strange, kissing a man. Steve has only ever kissed one girl, and that was Lottie Richmond in primary school. Just a peck on the lips at the water fountain and a giggle as they parted ways. It’d been nice, he remembers.

Kissing James isn’t ‘nice’ it’s…it’s _exciting._ It sends a strange thrill down Steve’s spine, a sense of _wrong_ and _right_ and _good_ that shames him as much as it makes his stomach flip with pleasure. He thinks he likes it too much, and it scares him.

Lottie’s ma had told her off, Steve remembers, for hanging about a boy like him, poor and fatherless and sick all the time. Lottie had ignored him the next day at school, and Steve never forgot the hurt of it even as young as he was. He’d felt the sting of rejection more and more as he grew older and never sprung up tall and strong like the other boys. He only tried a few more times, asking a girl to a school dance or for a soda after class, partly because it’s just what was done, partly because the longer he went without asking a girl the more the bullies called him names in the yard.

But with James, there was no rejection. If anything, Steve was the one feeling shy about going further, thinking about pulling away and wanting more all the while. It wasn’t lost on him that he's very much the girl in their arrangement, being shorter and slighter and weaker, and that rankles.

It’s soothed by the fact that, whenever he pulls away from a kiss, all he can see in James’ eyes is fierce longing, none of the embarrassment and discomfort that'd been in Lotties eyes. He wonders if one day he’ll show up to his door and James will look at him like Lottie had…wonders at how frightened Steve is at the thought. Worse is the thought that _Steve_ may be Lottie in this situation, and it makes him hate himself a little.

Sometimes he thinks there’s got to be a line, somewhere, a line that Steve will unwittingly cross eventually.

He’ll get sick of him eventually, Steve can’t help but believe. Sick of his weak heart and his asthma attacks and his constant colds when the weather turns. Sick of patching up his bleeding knuckles, sick of dealing with his sharp tongue and his hesitance to go further than kisses, sick of Steve’s obvious shame at what they’re doing. Steve dreams at night of one day showing up in Park Slope to find James not waiting for him at all. Instead, he’ll find a letter waiting for him, telling him not to come back.

But every week he shows up and there is no letter, just James with his crinkled smiles and his endearing grumpy old man grumbles and his homemade cake and his warm exciting kisses…

Of course, it can't last forever.

\--

Steve wants to tell himself that it's James’s hands wandering below the waist that makes fear rear it’s ugly head in the pit of his stomach...but it'd be a lie. It's not the hands, welcome and intoxicating in their gentle firmness, but rather what comes from James' mouth, the name he calls him. They’re sitting on the table beside one another, dinner finished but no dessert ordered yet, and they’re kissing has turned more heated than usual. Steve is halfway in the larger man’s lap, half-drunk from wine James had jokingly said he'd 'sold his arm for.'

The slick slide of tongue and lips and the feel of James’s hand through his hair is enough to have him responding in ways he hasn’t before, and it's with a shock that Steve realizes he's _hard._

Steve doesn’t get _hard_ , not without putting in the effort to get himself there purposefully. He used to think it was just his anemia or his iron deficiency that made it harder—or _softer_ technically—to get himself interested but lately…lately Steve’s begun to think he just didn’t have the right…stimulus.

He tries to pull away before James notices, but he’s too late. Not that the man minds, if anything it just makes him more insistent on keeping Steve close to him, grabbing him by the meat of his buttocks and pressing his own hard length against his ass and then he's groaning in Steve's ear a name he hasn't heard since his mother died.

"Stevie..."

And that’s the moment it all gets to be too much. Steve finds himself pushing away from the other man quick and hard with panic in his chest and a cold sweat breaking out on his skin. He instantly feels bad when he sees the carefully blank look on James’s face, but he can’t quite manage to push himself back into his arms.

“Sorry, sorry I just…I can’t…”

“That’s alright, Steve.” James says, and the way he says his name is almost purposeful, as if he knows what's made Steve pull away. He keeps his hands firmly to himself but looks at him such hunger it makes Steve shiver. “I pushed too far. Perhaps that’s enough for the day.”

“Oh, but…we haven’t had dessert?” Steve says without thinking. He flushes when James only smiles tightly, adjusting himself in his trousers in a way that’s not quite discreet.

“Ah, I’m afraid I’m quite full already. No room for dessert.” He says and then looks surreptitiously at his watch. “Besides, it’s getting late, isn’t it?”

Steve can’t think of anything else to say, so he just nods and makes his way to the door. He waits for a bit too long before he realizes James isn’t intending on kissing him goodbye, and then he rushes out the door red-faced and disappointed. 

—

The next week, when he arrives at the building in Park Slope at their usual time, Steve finds a letter waiting for him instead of James.

_“My apologies, my schedule’s been rather full as of late, I’m afraid I’m going to have to cancel our next few meetings. I apologize for the short notice, and any inconvenience this has caused you. I've left a present hidden by the stairs for you, to make up for it._

_I realize today is the day we would usually arrive on a new commission, but I want to try something new this time around. I want this next piece to be up to you, Steve. I want you to create something you think I’ll like._

_I’m sure nothing you make could disappoint me. I’ll see you in October, in three weeks' time._

_Yours,_

_Mr. Sakhar”_

Steve find the brown paper wrapped gift with only a bit of work, and he goes home with it tucked under his arm. They usually have dinner together and though Steve's stomach rumbles in hunger, he feels little urge to eat. He finds he can't wait to get home to open the gift and so he turns a corner into an alley and opens the brown paper bag with shaking fingers.

It's a shirt, pressed and starched and brand new but familiar.

 _To replace the ruined one._ A little note laying atop the blue shirt reads, and Steve fingers the collar free of the bloodstains of the old one.

The message is clear, if not said explicitly. _Give me more, or this arrangement will end._ At least...that's how Steve reads it anyway, and he knows it's the truth. It’s at this moment that he knows he’s being given an out by James. He’s at a turning point, standing at a crossroads, the ball is in his court, and he has to make a real decision.

He passes Houston Street on his walk home, sees the ramshackle homes there, cobbled together by the unemployed, made of scavenged wood, and broken doors left out for garbage. Will he end up on in one of those houses if he ends this relationship of mutual benefit here and now? Is he willing to do what it takes to stay on as they are? To push the boundaries of his comfort and explore what two men can do together in a dark and private apartment?

If he were a sensible, more morally sound sort of man he’d take the out immediately. He’d see reason, realize what he’s doing will only lead to hell and damnation, a life of sin and possible jail time, not the life of a respectable good man. He can hear Father Peter now, face red and spittle flying with the fervor of his recitation of the gospel.

“ _If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them!”_

Steve should end this now. If he were a real man, we _would_ end it now…but, he knows at that moment that he is not that man, because for all the reasons he finds to stop this farce, he can’t help but find another, better, reason to continue it. Then again, it’s not so surprising really. Steve Rogers has never been one to follow the rules set out for him if they didn’t suit him.

 _Besides,_ that sinful voice that so often got him in trouble whispered in his ear, _what’s it really matter to God what two people do in the dark if it’s not harming anyone?_

 _No one else will see it that way,_ the voice of reason rebuttals, _it’s illegal._

It’s not a great argument against someone like Steve, who’s always looked at laws as a bit more flexible than most, at least when they’re _dumb_ laws. And right now, this one is seeming like a pretty dumb law.

But law’s are one thing…they change over time, change _with_ the times. God’s laws are different and breaking them…well.

You don’t just go to jail, you go to _hell._ Or at least that’s what Father Peter would say, what Sarah Rogers would say.

Steve had often thought many of the things Father Peter touted as being sins rather dumb too, but…but despite his doubts he’d always repented for committing them. Now though? Steve doesn’t _want_ to repent. That’s the real problem.

He’s a sinner…and he’s afraid he _likes_ it. More than that, he’s afraid of just how much he’s begun to rely on James, and he knows that’s the root of the problem, the reason why he’d startled so bad at being called _Stevie._

Because he’s afraid of what he’d do when things end when he eventually loses James like he seems so close to doing now.

—

He sits in his small dingy apartment, looks at the newspaper clippings of a nicer apartment he’d been hoping to take a look at next week, and he thinks _should I cancel the walk-through?_

The blank canvas next to the clippings mocks him, sitting so white and boring next to the half-finished commission to the right of it. Steve’s particularly proud of how it’s coming along, especially considering it’s not a style he’s used to painting in, more classical, less obvious brush strokes.

It’s a piece for a couple James had introduced him to, as is usual with his commissions. A man who told Steve his name was Clark, just Clark, and his mistress Ms. Lyvia. Steve thinks Clark's married, going by the tan line he’d seen on his ring finger, but he never wears a ring and Steve never asks. Even if he weren’t Steve knows it wouldn’t matter, he and his Ms. Lyvia still wouldn’t be able to be together, at least not without becoming social pariahs.

Because Ms. Lyvia is quick as a whip, funny and smart and beautiful…but she’s also a negro, and Clark is very much _not._

They’re clearly goofy over one another though, and they’re always the epitome of respectful and welcoming to Steve whenever they commission a new piece from him. This particular piece is a nude portrait of Ms. Lyvia, one which Clark had insisted make her ‘ _look like the goddess she is.’_ Steve had instantly thought of several paintings to take reference from, had even had James take him to the Met to look at two famous nudes, _the Venus of Urbino_ and the later _Olympia_ for research. Steve looked upon the white nakedness of Olympia, at her negro maid holding flowers from a client, at the little black cat perched at the foot of her bed, and found it incredibly sad that there were no such highly regarded paintings of women that looked like Ms. Lyvia. The only paintings he's seen hung in the Metropolitan with dark-skinned women are only ever seen in the background, relegated to representations of sexual deviancy or worse 'black and white, good and bad, clean and dirty.

 _"It's sad, isn't it?"_ Steve had said as he walked beside James with sketchbook in hand, looking at the art around them and seeing it with new eyes, _"That things can't be different?"_

Strangely, James hadn't seemed to need clarification on the words, had only sighed. _"Nothing stands still forever, Steve. The world is forever moving."_

 _"Not always forward, though."_ Steve had argued with a frown, and James had had no answer to that.

Steve had promised himself that day in the Met that he'd do Ms. Lyvia justice in her painting, and Steve thinks he’s lived up to that promise, if he says so himself.

Ms. Lyvia lounges like Venus on a bed of purple silk, her dark skin only more beautiful by contrast. Her hair springs unbound about her head like a dark halo, and sitting with his head upon the foot of her bed is her lover, Clark, rendered like a peon praying at her feet, arms full of offerings. Behind her, the window sets the scene of ancient Greece, a tiny cupid peering in with his bow cocked and aimed.

It’s entirely overly dramatic in Steve’s opinion, but he has a feeling that it’s exactly what the star crossed lovers are looking for.

It’s the biggest Steve’s done so far, and due to be delivered in a week’s time. He laughs a bit at a sudden memory of his mother looking over his shoulder at his first signage job for Rochelle’s, one boasting marked down laundering. She’d always been so supportive of his choice of art as a career, always loved everything he'd made…

He can’t help but look at the painting for Ms. Lyvia and Mr. Clark, and wonder if she’d be so supportive now.

Sarah Rogers would near faint from the shock of seeing the paintings he earns a living off of. Her son, painting such ‘vulgar’ things, associating with the bohemian and the entitled of New York, blue bloods instead of blue collars, outcasts, mixed couples, queers, fairies, and everything in between.

What would she think of him now, if she were still here? Probably nothing good. She’d look at the sort he meets, and she’d cross herself, tell Steve he should avoid those “ _Sinners who think they’re saints_.”

He feels a curl of shame as soon as he thinks it, knowing it’s _not_ true. He thinks of Mrs. Geller, with her unfettered laugh and her cheek pinching, of the love and affection in Clark's eyes as he looks at Ms. Lyvia, both of them so clearly happy with one another.

 _It’s not fair,_ Steve thinks sadly, _that they can’t be with one another without folks shaming them._

If he decides to end his arrangement with James, will his other commissions end too? Will this little life and career that Steve’s built for himself crumble into nothing?

James has always seemed so intent of helping Steve get ahead in life as if he actually _wants_ him to succeed, wants him to be happy, wants to be with him because he _cares_ for him. But there’s a price for that success, that happiness, that _care,_ isn’t there? There’s always a price. Steve was just too naive up until this moment to realize it.

So now, the decision. Is this really who he wants to be? Is this really how he wants to make a name for himself? Off of lies and sold affection?

Steve sighs, and can’t help but remember his mother and all the long hard days she’d worked to give him the best life she could. Can’t help but remember how she never failed to drag him to church every Sunday rain or shine.

This isn’t what she’d want from him…is it?

 _It’s not fair,_ Steve thinks, _that people like Mr. Clark and Ms. Lyvia can't be with one another just because of the color of their skin._

 _It's not fair,_ He thinks a moment later, _that men can’t go with other men as they do with women if they want to._

What’s the harm in it? Who are Mr. Clark and Ms. Lyvia hurting by loving one another? Who are James and Steve hurting?

 _Themselves,_ the church would say, _Their immortal souls._

 _No one._ Is the answer Steve finds in himself, but he knows it’s not an answer most would agree with.

What would Sarah Rogers' answer be?

He decides to sleep on it, and in the night he dreams of strange fog-like things.

\--

_Laughter, and an arm around his neck, a boy with the most beautiful smile. He dreams of a friend at his side, a lover in the night, a man who stands with him at the end of a long line drawn across the ice with the sands of time. He calls the man at his side a name that shouldn't fit but does, and suddenly the man is a boy and he's smiling down at Steve as he tells him his name, a name he'd once whispered alone in his room while his mother watched in amusement._

_"Who're ye talking to, Stevie?" His mother asks him, and Steve looks up with a gap-toothed smile from his sickbed._

_"My best friend." He says with a giggle._

_"Oh? And what's your friend's name, then?" His mother says, smiling that sad smile of a mother who's humoring their child. Their child who's always too sick to go out and make friends with the other boys their age, their child who's lonely and tired enough of silence to make up an imaginary friend to keep them busy._

_"His name's Bucky!"_

_—and suddenly Steve's surrounded by war and death, and the man turns to him at the call of his name that isn’t his name, and he draws Steve in close to kiss him with sinfully pretty lips…but when he pulls back, he’s old and grey and looks so different with his weary eyes and broken body, and Steve knows that it’s James that’s holding him close but he keeps calling him by the wrong name anyways—_

_"Bucky, Bucky, Bucky—"_

_And through it all, his mother whispers in his ear, in that pretty Irish brogue she’d yell at him for trying to imitate._

_“Life is what ye make of it, a stór. If ye do your best, if’in you're happy, it don’t be no one else’s business how ye get there. Are ye happy, a stór? I want ye to be happy, Stevie…”_

—

He wakes drenched in sweat, trapped in his blanket, clinging to the memory of his mother's last words to him, said through painfully cracked lips from her death bed. When he turns his head, the blank canvas stares at him, taunting, and he has an intense urge to paint the youthful boy from his dream, a half-remembered imaginary friend, thought up by childhood loneliness and an active imagination...but as soon as the thought comes Steve finds it impossible to grasp the shape of his face, the color of his eyes. Instead, all that remains is James, his face, his smile, his lips. Steve gets up and lights the oil lamp on his bedside table, looks at the note laid there.

 _I want this next piece to be up to you, Steve. I want you to create something you think I’ll like._ _I’m sure nothing you make could disappoint me._

Unlike the apartment in Flatbush where he’d lived most of his life in with his mother, there’s no electric lighting in the rooming house that Steve lives in now. It’s an old law tenement building on the outskirts of Brooklyn Heights, the rent only so cheap because the landlord was too cheap to have outfitted the building with such ‘luxuries’ as indoor bathrooms and lighting when the new residency laws were put in place. Still, it’s better by far than what many people have right now. All Steve has to do is walk near past Red Hook’s Tin City to be firmly reminded of how lucky he is to have a roof over his head at all.

His eyes hover once more on the little newspaper clipping of the studio apartment he’s been eying now for a few days. Still in Brooklyn Heights, but a newer building, on a street known for being home to all sorts of artists and musicians and the like. It’s a fourth-floor walk-up, high enough that no buildings around it block the big windows from the sun, and there's electric lighting and a _private bathroom_.

He thinks of James' mouth on his, the heat it stirs in his stomach, and he thinks of how Ms. Lyvia and Mr. Clark look at one another, at how _James_ looks at him. How does Steve look at 'Mr. Sakhar' he wonders? Does he look a besotted fool? A stricken sinner? Does he look at him as Olympia looks at the viewer of her painting, shameless in her sexuality and desire?

Half in a daze, Steve pulls out his sharpened piece of lead, sets the blank canvas up proper, and stares at it. On the wall beside it is a hung cross, and Steve sits below his judging eyes and thinks, _am I happy? Do you make me happy?_

Steve sits until the morning light is filtering through his curtains, and then he heads to church with a troubled and doubtful heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Olympia is a painting by Claude Monet, and it depicts a Parisian prostitute (olympia was a name used in 1860's paris to refer to prostitutes) in the style and framing of the Venus of Urbino. Definitely look it up and read up on it's symbolism and meaning if you'd like, I found it really interesting, and rather fitting for this fic considering Steve himself is struggling with his own sexuality and acceptance of the fact he is kinda a sex worker himself.


	6. Confessions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The world is not so black and white as they would have us believe." She takes her hand off his and cups his cheek, forcing him to look into her sad, weary eyes. “If you find someone that makes you happy dear, then don’t you mind whether people say it’s right or not.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Get ready for some pooooorrn yall. But first, some good ol' catholic guilt and a healthy dose of repression.

**1936**

_Holy Cross Church, Brooklyn, NY_

"Bless me father, for I have sinned. It has been two months since my last confession." Steve says tremulously.

It’s on the tip of his tongue, as it has been every week he's come to confession and tried to unload all his sins and repent.

_I have committed a sin of impurity against nature by lusting after a man, kissing a man. I have fallen to avarice, sinned in return for material things._

Those are the things he should say, those are the things his mother would have wanted him to seek absolution for. But Steve should feel sorrow and regret over his sins, should promise to never do it again and _mean_ it...and he doesn't. He wants forgiveness, without the sacrifice. He wants the fantasy of the priest telling him through the screen that his sins are not sins, that he does not need to be forgiven. His mother would be ashamed of him, Steve knows, but he doesn't want to stop.

"I confess that I...that I have fallen to avarice. I have coveted wealth despite knowing others need it more than I." Steve finally chokes out, and though it's not entirely the truth of the matter it's close enough that he feels a weight lift from his shoulders.

"This wealth you covet, why do you think others need it more than you?"

"There are so many people out there who are so much worse off than I am," Steve says, slightly surprised that he would ask such a thing. He would have thought the answer obvious. "People who are sick with no one to care for them, people who have no home, no job, no hope..."

"I see." Father Peter says again, as he always does. He sighs after a moment and Steve waits in nervous silence for his sentence. "Having money is not a sinful thing, my child, especially in these hard times. We all need it to survive, and sometimes we must find steady ground before we can help others to their feet. Avarice is a sin, however, and we must not lose sight of the poor and needy. As penance, give what extra food or money you have to our poor bin, but not so much that you yourself join their ranks."

Father Peter's suggested food donations are a good idea, an easy penance, and far more meaningful than a few hail marys. But then he thinks of the pictures James takes him to, the art galleries, the fancy clothes and the fancy restaurants. He thinks of the envelopes of money that pay his rent and his groceries in exchange for the lewd pieces of art he gives him. He thinks of the knitted scarves and socks and hats he drops off at the church bins every month and knows he can do more, _will_ do more to give a bit of the wealth he's gained back to his community. It's only right.

"Yes, father," Steve says with a grateful sigh. This at least he feels better about, and he's suddenly so grateful that he'd come to a confession despite having dreaded it all week. He can feel Father Peters take a breath, about to absolve him and a sudden surge of courage and desperation makes him say, "Wait. Father, I...I have something else to confess."

Father Peter stays quiet, waiting, and Steve steals himself. He cannot possibly tell him the truth, he just _can't,_ but maybe he can get close to it. "I must confess that I have also lusted after one I shouldn't."

Father Peter is quiet, waiting for him to say more, but Steve says nothing.

"She is married?" Father Peter asks, and Steve swallows hard.

"Yes." He says, and it's not entirely a lie. James is married after all.

"And have you fallen to temptation?"

"... _yes."_ Steve says with a pained grimace. "We have...kissed. Many times."

"I see..." Father Peter says again, solemnly, " _The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.'"_

 _Romans 8:6,_ Steve thinks with a guilty grimace. Father Peters sighs deeply behind the partition.

"As penance, one hail mary for every time you commit the sin of adultery of the mind, and lest you fall to temptation again you must remove yourself from this woman's life." Father Peters says, "Do you regret your sins?"

He should, he should regret his sins, _he should._

"Yes, Father," Steve says. It's the first time he's ever lied so directly in the house of God. It is not a good feeling.

"Repent, my child."

"My God, I am sorry for my sins with all my heart. In choosing to do wrong and failing to do good, I have sinned against you, whom I should love above all things. I firmly intend, with your help, to do penance, to sin no more, and to avoid whatever leads me to sin." Steve's voice shakes on the tail end of the words, and he feels a flush come over the back of his neck as if God is burning it as he looks down on him, judging him for lying in his house. "Our Savior Jesus Christ suffered and died for us. In his name, my God, have mercy."

"God, the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son has reconciled the world to himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins; through the ministry of the Church may God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."

"Amen." Steve whispers, and it sounds like the closing of some great gate in his soul. It’s as freeing as it is terrifying.

He leaves the confessional intending on heading straight home, but a slight figure in the pews makes him hesitate to leave. Mrs. McIntyre is sitting at the front, looking up at the elaborate wood carving of the crucified Jesus Christ. He’s just decided to leave her to her praying and head home when she looks up and gives him her bright smile with it's missing front tooth, and his feet move without meaning to.

“Steve Rogers.” She says fondly, and as he sits beside her he notices she’s wearing the knit scarf she’d helped him make so long ago now. It’s bumpy and misshapen but she wears it with her best church clothes, and it makes his chest ache for his mother. “It’s been some time since I’ve seen you around! I stopped by the other day with pot roast, but you were out.”

“I’m sorry to have missed you, I was…with a friend.” He says and smiles tremulously as she takes his hand in both of hers and pats it. He can't believe, in that moment, that he ever thought she was just some grumpy old lady with a constant scowl.

“Ah, yes, your gentleman caller.” She says, so casually that Steve almost thinks he misheard her or perhaps imagined it, but her knowing look is enough to dissuade him from those notions.

“Um, it’s, he’s not—“ Steve tries to come up with an excuse, a denial, but his heart is beating too hard and fast and he can’t _think._

“Oh, calm down now dear.” She says with another pat of his hand, “No need to be shy around an old lady like me. I’ve seen it all, trust me.”

Steve takes a deep breath, settling into this strange turn of events. Like his feet before, his lips begin to move without his own permission. “You don’t…think it’s wrong?”

Mrs. McIntyre just turns her wrinkled gaze upon him, serious and no-nonsense as she always is. She looks at him for a long moment before humming and turning back to look upon their lord and savior’s cross.

“You’ve seen my missing tooth.” She says, rather than answer his question. “Did I ever tell you how I lost it?”

“I…no.” Steve says, blinking in confusion.

“Fell out when I had my face knocked into my dining room table. Broke my nose too, ’s why it’s crooked.” She says, and then she tut's at him when he nearly stands up in his shocked outrage. "Oh, now, none of that! Sit down—"

“Who would do that to you? Was it someone I know, because I could—"

She laughs, shaking her head and interrupting him abruptly, “Thank you dear, but it was a long time ago, and the man who did it is just as long dead.”

Steve frowns and with sudden clarity he tries to think if he’s ever seen her husband around. He can’t remember a man ever coming from her apartment, except for a younger gentleman that could only be her son. He's never paid much attention to who lived with her, he’s not so nosy as that, but his window did look directly into her kitchen and he couldn't help but see her having coffee with an older woman in her kitchen nearly every morning.

“Was it…I mean, I don’t mean to presume but…” Steve clears his throat awkwardly, worried about coming off as rude or presumptuous. "I know you're a widow..."

“Yes. It was my husband. It was hardly the worst he did to me either.” She says, as if it's nothing, “I don’t think you’d have liked him much if you'd met him, sharp boy like you. I could tell right soon as I met you that you had an eye for that sort of thing.”

Steve tentatively looks over at her, feeling a deep-seated sad rage for her, "Who would like a man like that? It's not right, to hit a woman, especially one that's your _wife_.”

“That's a more _modern_ view than what I grew up with, dear. Though no one knew, really. Most people loved him.” She says quietly, “He was a shining pillar of the community, they said. He had a good job, came from a good family, he went to church every Sunday and more besides, he never drank and he was good friends with the cops in the area…he could do no wrong, you see, so of course if he said I’d fallen or burnt myself cooking or even _ran into a door,_ they believed him.”

Steve grips her papery thin hand in his, eyes itching. He doesn’t know what to say, or even if he should say anything. ‘Sorry’ feels too small a word for such a thing.

“He’s dead now thirty years, anyway. Widowed at thirty-five with two screaming mouths to feed and another in my belly.” She says, and she doesn’t sound sad. “Oh, how they _wept_ at his funeral, spoke of what a good man he was, how he would be _welcomed_ with open arms into the gates of heaven…and I just _laughed,_ because none of them, not a single one, not even his priest, really knew the man I called husband. They didn’t know the monster that hid behind his pretty mask...and often I felt even if they did they'd not change their opinion.”

Her voice is hoarse now, and there's a deep scowl upon her face. Suddenly the corner of her mouth twitches up just slightly as if reminded of a good memory within all the bad. “My friend, Anne, the _dear…_ I don’t know what I would have done without her. She was practically a second mother to my children, and I, in turn, to hers.”

And it’s something in the way she looks at him then, something in the way she says Anne’s name, so fond and _loving,_ a reminder of how this conversation started, that it makes Steve think perhaps they were more than just _friends_.

"Is the lady I see you having breakfast with every morning?"

"Why, you peeping tom!" Mrs. McIntyre barks a laugh, unworried about her gapped smile around him any longer. She only laughs harder as Steve denies it furiously, "Oh, I don't mind dear, I'm just razzing you. If I didn't want folks looking in I'd close the curtains."

Steve flushes as Mrs. McIntyre gives him a very pointed look, as if she knows exactly why he has his curtains closed so often during the day. He has to remind himself that he's just being paranoid, that there's no way she could know it's because he's painting obscene things lamplight.

"You seem...close." Is all Steve can manage, and she gives him a pat on his red cheek and a wink.

"Close, yes, very close. Have been since my husband died." She says airily. "My late husband, he was always so against our friendship while he was alive...Anne was the only one who could see through him, the only one that saw him for the monster he was, and he knew it."

They sit in contemplative silence for a moment, as Steve thinks over what she's said, how this conversation had to come to this point. He puts the pieces together, a slow-growing understanding building within him, and when he turns to his left he finds Mrs. McIntyre already looking at him. Her gaze is patient like she's just waiting for him to ask her the question she knows he wants to.

“Mrs. McIntyre…” Steve whispers, unable to look away from her shining intense gaze. He knows he shouldn't, but he can't help himself, can't help the sliver of suspicion in his breast. “How did your husband die?”

There’s no one in the church now, the pews are empty, the priest gone into some back room. They’re alone, and Mrs. McIntyre speaks so quietly not even her whispers echo.

“He died in his sleep. Of a heart attack.” She says, unblinking, “It was always a possibility, born with a heart defect as he was. He took medication for it, you see, but one night while I was away at my dear friend Anne’s against his wishes, he got drunk and simply…took the wrong pill.”

Steve swallows harshly, “I thought you said he didn’t drink.”

“Oh, not in public. But there was always whiskey in the house. It was the reason I left for Anne’s that night. Or at least, the reason I told everyone who asked.”

“I…see.”

“Do you?” Mrs. McIntyre says softly, “Do you see what I’m trying to tell you, boy?" 

“I think I do, yes.” He says quietly.

"The world is not so black and white as they would have us believe." She takes her hand off his and cups his cheek, forcing him to look into her sad, weary eyes. “If you find someone that makes you happy dear, then don’t you mind whether people say it’s right or not.”

—

When Steve returns home he closes all his curtains tight and lights an oil lamp despite the fact the sun is still high in the sky.

He hears Mrs. McIntyre's voice echoing in his ears too, drowning out the sound of Father Peter's shame-inducing sermons, backed by the sweet cadence of Sarah Rogers, telling him not to mind what others think so long as he is happy.

Is it really that easy? Can he really let it be that simple?

His eyes go to the unmarked canvas leaning against the wall, and without his permision his hands begin to take his church clothes off, leaving him shivering in the cool air of his room. He stands and looks at the now-familiar sight of his naked form in front of his dingy full-length mirror, the unmarked canvas lays propped against the wall beside it, waiting for his mark and vision.

_I want this next piece to be up to you, Steve. I want you to create something you think I’ll like._

This painting is more important than all the others, Steve knows, for this painting will be his own letter to James, his intentions writ in paint, his soul on canvas.

Steve knows he could just do more of the same he has been doing. A nude painting or drawing, perhaps one of his hand on his cock this time or some suggestive posing but…well, Steve’s always been one to go big or go home. All or nothing, he always says, though usually, it’s right before he bashes his head into some jerk's nose who he's fighting in a back alley.

He double-checks that the windows are closed and the curtains were drawn, flushing as he remembers the teasing look Mrs. McIntyre had sent him. He checks again just one more time before he goes to stand in front of the mirror, waiting for inspiration to strike. For a moment he just stands in complete stillness, looking at himself in the glow of the lamplight.

The shadows cast by the sharp jut of his hip bones, the hard angle of his jaw, and his shoulders. He’s not soft. He has no real curves to speak of. Not at all womanly, as much as he is slight and smaller than many a dame. It makes him feel a bit better about what he’s going to do, and he always endeavors to play up his more masculine features every time he puts lead to canvas.

His form is familiar to himself by now, after so many self-portraits done for James. But this time around…this time he knows he has to go above and beyond. He has to show James the truth of who he is, of what he wants—from him, with him. It’s a truth he’s not sure he’s ready to look so directly at, and yet he knows he must.

Suddenly, he rises and opens his closet door, staring into it for a moment before taking out a coat, long and made of dark brushed wool, double-breasted with glassy black buttons. It's a good warm coat, expensive and fine, and already he feels overheated just looking at it. He pulls it on with a shaky breath, shocked at the sensualness of the silk lining against his bare skin. Steve moves then to take his watch from the top of his nightstand, the metal of it cool against the flushed skin of his wrist.

When he stands in front of the mirror again it’s in nothing but things James has given him, and the heat that rushes into the pit of his stomach at the thought is anything but chaste.

Before he can think too awful much on it, Steve pulls a pillow from his bed to the floor and sprawls out on it as a cat stretches in the sun, only his sun is the warm glow of a burning oil lamp. He moves the lamp to the right, casting himself just right in soft light and soft shadows. He takes a long look before he puts lead to canvas, sketching himself and the long sensual lines the coat makes against his pale skin. He takes particular time with his hands, drawing the right one loosely holding his cock, a mirror to real life.

Steve’s physical hands shake as he looks at himself in the mirror, drawing what he sees. His long fingers wrapped around himself, his cock painfully hard just from a touch, just from the feel of the coat’s lining sliding against his bare bottom and thighs. He hesitates as he goes to draw his other hand. He’d intended it to be simply laying limply against his thigh…and yet…

Go big or go home. All or nothing.

As if in a daze, Steve kneels to pull out the little box of his medical supplies from under his bed. There, wrapped in cloth and pushed to the side are a set of Dr. Young’s rectal dilators, and Steve instantly flushes to see them.

He’s never been one to draw from imagination, his greatest asset in his art has always been his perfect recall of things he’s seen, but in order to use that recall, he has to have actually _seen it._ So, _this is research_ , he tells himself, but a little voice in the back of his head corrects him and whispers, _this is practice._

One day, this will likely be something James asks of him. Steve is smaller, slighter, younger than James, and Steve is sure he would undoubtedly be expected to play the part of the woman if they were to fall into bed. He finds he doesn't mind the idea as much as he probably should. Finds the idea of it _exciting_ even, to be so connected to a man like that.

James calls Steve a _‘punk’_ sometimes, and though it’s teasing and fond and obviously _not_ meant to be insulting, Steve better than anyone knows what that word means—what it _suggests_. He’d had the word thrown at him enough growing up, by the bullies that would look at him and make assumptions based on his liking art and being small and not exactly the epitome of masculinity.

Steve likes the way James says it though, sweet and fond like it’s an endearment rather than a mark against his character. All the same, Steve decides he needs to know now if it’s something he can stand, what he will inevitably want from him, or if he'll hate it and find this truly is something he just can’t do.

He takes the tin full of vaseline next to the dilators and he slicks his fingers first. His hand trails down past his balls, shivering at the slick feeling of his fingers pressing and rubbing at a place they never have before. At least not in a sexual sense. He pushes one inside himself slowly and carefully, then two after some long breathing and prodding. It’s not an overtly sexual feeling, more simple pressure, and a strange burning stretch, but it doesn’t hurt and so he’s not hesitant when he reaches next for the smallest of the dilators a while later.

It's smooth and black, a straight cylindrical shape with a bulbous tapered top. It's undoubtedly phallic, though Steve knows it's not meant to be considering it's a medical device given to him by a real doctor. He doesn't know how he'd used these things before and not seen it's obvious suggestiveness honestly. He’d only used them once before when he was struck with a rather awful case of constipation and the doctor had insisted. It hadn’t been lewd or sexual then, because Steve had been cramping and sweating something awful in a way that was decidedly _not_ pleasant.

This time though, sitting on the ground in front of the mirror, his cock thick in his hand and his stomach clenching with arousal…it is most decidedly pleasant. 

Every bit of learned logic is telling him that he should find the idea of doing this—the idea of two men having sex like this—dirty and wrong, and yet despite himself Steve only gets harder at the thought of the rectal dilator being a real cock, _James’_ cock, rather than hard rubber. Putting aside his own embarrassment, and with a long careful breath out, he slides the hard rubber dilator inside himself.

Steve can’t help the little sound of pleasure that escapes him when he tugs at the dilator, pushing it in deep and then easing it out just slightly. His breath shudders in his chest as he eyes the set of larger ones still in the box. It’s like he’s turned the lights on, released his last hold on his inhibitions and embraced the longing and arousal waiting in the dark. He feels at once unmade and more in control than ever before.

He knows what he wants, and for once, he does not deny himself. The next size up is a considerably larger stretch, and it makes the rim of his hole burn in a way that Steve can’t make heads or tails of. It’s good, it’s bad, it’s—no, no it’s _good._

Without realizing it, Steve finds himself rocking back and forth on the floor, the dilator moving inside him with his movements. He’s not even looking at himself in the mirror anymore, he’s just _feeling._ He presses one hand below his balls, and the other wraps around his cock, tugging desperately. The hard rubber inside of him shifts just right on one rock forward and Steve shudders down to his toes, cock twitching in his hand. He nearly swears aloud but catches himself at the last minute.

Looking up at himself in the mirror is nearly his undoing, seeing the head of his cock dripping with pre-come, shining in the low yellow light of the lamp, the wrinkled rim of his hole twitching around the base of the dilator lewdly. It’s obscene, _he’s_ obscene. Like something straight out of a girly mag or some Tijuana bible comic strip.

He never would have thought having something up his ass would feel _good._ Sure, he knows it’s what’s done between men that lie with one another, has heard the disparaging comments about pillow biters and the like…but he never really thought of why someone would _want_ to have such a thing done to them. He supposes he always thought it was just something that was done for the sake of the person doing the screwing, rather than enjoyment from the act itself.

He feels mighty stupid for thinking so right now, that’s for sure.

When Steve comes he's stipping his cock hard enough it chafes, and his orgasm is so sharp and intense it knocks the breath right out of him, so much so that he’s almost afraid he’s going to have an asthma attack. He resorts to squeezing the head of his cock as his release tappers off, rocking forcefully down on the dilator as little groans escape his throat without his permission, every muscle in his body tense and shaking and twitching. It takes him a good fifteen minutes to catch his breath again after, just lying on the cold floor waiting to stop seeing spots in his vision.

“Well.” He says quietly to himself, eyes wide, “I can certainly stand it, there’s no doubt about that.”

Then, staring up at the cracked and water-stained ceiling of his room, Steve _laughs._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooooo, that's my first time writing a masturbation scene, and right after a confession scene too! For shame. XD Also, FYI, rectal dilators were a real thing and they are literally 1930's dildos marketed as constipation aids and I'm just like...how did people not see it back then lol XD


	7. Happy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Are ye happy a stór? I want ye to be happy…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning! This chapter earns it's ratings folks! 
> 
> Enjoy ;p

**1936**

_102 Prospect Park West, Brooklyn, NY_

The day he brings back the painting of him using the—the _rectal dilators_ on himself, James is waiting for him with eyes more guarded than usual and no kiss at the door. He holds himself tight like he’s restraining himself from reaching out for Steve, like he thinks he’s not welcome to do so. It only makes Steve more sure of what he’s about to do, and he walks into the apartment with near militant focus and unveils the piece with little more than a ‘how do you do.’ Then he steps back and waits.

James stands and stares at it for a long, long time. Almost long enough that Steve starts thinking maybe he doesn’t like it, that maybe he’s gone too far and fallen over the edge of erotic art and right into raunchy and pornographic, that maybe it’s too much.

It’s a bigger piece than the past one’s he’s done, a full-body portrait of him, seen from the side. He’s wearing only the coat James had given him, open and slipping down one boney shoulder, and he’s sitting on the floor, back against the bed behind him, neck arched to lay against rumpled sheets but turned so his blue eyes stare directly out at the viewer—at _James_. It’s rendered in deep chiaroscuro, with the warm yellow and orange light of the lamp hitting him from the floor to his left. His outer leg is raised, hiding his groin and hands from view, and the brush strokes of his thighs are soft and inviting against the more sharp ones of the rest of the dark room.

Steve’s rather proud of the artistry of it, and perhaps if Steve had left it at that it would not be so obscene…perhaps if he hadn’t put the mirror in front of him, displaying all that was hidden by his leg, then Steve would not flush so awfully to look at it. But he had, and so here they are.

Slowly, James reaches out, and his fingers hover shakily over where Steve is reflected in the mirror at the right of the painting. His chest bared, his legs splayed, his one hand on his hard length and the other…the other is lower, behind where his balls hang heavy and full, holding the base of the dilator half inside half outside of himself. Steve swallows thickly with remembered pleasure, filled with as much embarrassment as he is anticipation.

“You’ve often told me you need models to paint from…that your imagination isn’t so great as to create things you’ve never seen before,” James whispers, not looking away from the painting. “Was that…the case here, as well?”

Steve swallows, eyes glued now to James’ profile. “Yes.”

In the next second James’ full attention is on Steve, the real Steve standing before him, not the one staring out so proudly from the painting. His nostrils flare as he steps in close, breath rising and falling in starts and stops. Steve doesn’t look away from his chest, unable to look up.

“Did you like it?” James suddenly says, leaning down a little as if to catch his eye. “Using those on yourself?”

When Steve looks at him, finally, James’s eyes are dark as pitch, his face flushed above his beard, his slicked-back hair sticking up at all angles as if he’s run his hand through it with intensity. He knows what that look means, knows it means the other man is aroused, and that _he’s_ made him aroused. James’s hand reaches up, traces along the line of his face, and tips his chin so he’s meeting his eyes directly.

“Did it feel good?” He says, low and quiet, “Fucking yourself on something like that? Did you watch yourself in the mirror as you did it? Did you like it? Tell me you liked it, Steve.”

“Y-yes.” Steve whispers in a deep voice like gravel, hands fisted at his side, undone by the sound of such crude words falling from the usually very genteel man. He’s not sure what he’d do if he let himself touch James right then, if he’d pull him closer for a kiss or push him against the couch behind him and—“I loved it.”

Then, like a sudden storm, James is upon him. All lips and tongue and hot hands racing along his boney shoulders. Steve tries his best to keep up with his fervent kisses, feeling overwhelmed and excited, and a little sick with nerves all at once. His head tips back as lips trace down his neck, and when he bites at the cord of muscle there it pulls a noise out of him, unlike anything he’s ever heard himself make.

“I’m going to touch you, Steve.” James whispers in his ear, “Tell me now if you don’t want this. Tell me now and I’ll stop.”

Steve hovers on that thimble of uncertainty, on the razors edge of sin and morality. His breath is wild and rapid in his chest, his heart pounding. But the doubt is quick to leave him, for he’s never felt more alive and wanted and he made his choice weeks ago.

And yet…

His hand whips out, grasping James’ as it reaches his buckle. James looks at him, eyes dark and hands trembling, almost _pleading._ Steve clenches his jaw, feels a rush of strange power.

“Tell me your name first,” Steve whispers in the tense air between them, and he sees James still. “Tell me your name…and I’ll let you touch me.”

There’s quiet for a moment and Steve shivers with sudden worry that he’s pushed too far, stepped over the invisible line drawn in the sand between them. Then James’ smiles.

“I think you’ve known my name for a while now, haven’t you Steve?” He says, fingers curling around Steve’s belt buckle but not moving to undo it without his permission. He tilts his head questioningly, even as Steve's eyes widen in surprise. “I was wondering when you’d get around to calling me out on it after I introduced you to Mrs. Geller…but you never did.”

Steve lets out a long shaky breath, his shoulders slowly relaxing as he sways into and away from James. He can’t look away from his mouth, can’t seem to breathe for wanting it. “I wasn’t sure if it was your real name, and…I wanted you to tell me. I…I wanted to hear you say it.”

Slowly, those unbearably plush lips pull into a crooked smirk and James leans forward to brush them against Steve’s ear. “My name _is_ James, Steve. It may not be the one given to me as a babe, but it is the one I chose for myself, the only one I answer to, I swear it.”

Something like relief hits Steve, who'd been vaguely worried he'd have to adjust to calling the man something else. He sways closer, their lips hardly a papers width apart.

“James.” Steve whispers aloud for the first time, and in the next moment, with a shuddering gasp, he lets go of James’ wrist.

It’s all James needs to unbuckle his trousers and slide his hand inside to grip him. It punches another one of those strange noises out of him, those pained breathy sounds that Steve hadn’t even been aware he could make.

 _“Please,”_ Steve chokes out, near falling into James’ chest as he clutches at him. It’s the first time he’s ever had someone else’s hand on him, and it’s nothing like his own, it’s so much _more_. It’s dry and chafes but it’s almost unbearably good, and he feels his stomach caving in and his thigh muscles clenching as his pleasure builds almost too fast.

“That’s it, just let go,” He hears James’ whisper against his ear, and so extreme is their height difference that when James’ presses his own hardness against Steve it’s into his shivering stomach. “Come for me _Stevie_.”

It’s probably embarrassing how quickly he comes at the sound of that endearment from his lips, but Steve can’t find it in himself to care. The pull of James’s hand along the sensitive skin of his cock, the slick slide of his palm over the leaking head, the hushed moan in his ear as he kisses from shoulder to jawline, calling him _Stevie_ so purposefully like he _knows_ what it does to him. What it means to him. Safety, comfort, _good._

He doesn’t last more than a few strokes before he’s shaking through completion, his leavings spilling all down James’s nice cashmere sweater that’s probably worth a whole month of Steve’s rent.

He sways when it’s over, and when his knees give out on him James’ only catches him enough so he doesn’t hurt himself when his knees hit the floor. It’s only when the thick uncut cock is bobbing in front of him that Steve’s eyes refocus and his nerves come back to him. He looks up from beneath his lashes shyly, and James _groans._

Intimidated, Steve leans back a little, eyeing the cock so close to him he must be cross-eyed. “I-I’ve never—“

“It’s alright, Steve, just mind the teeth. You’ll do fine, _motek._ ” James says, and then in the next moment seems to come back himself a little as his hand freezes on his cock and he quickly says, “But you don’t have to, Stevie, you can just use your hand.”

Steve opens his mouth to say he’s not sure but then finds instead that he’s leaning forward without thinking, and then he’s kissing the tip of James’ uncut cock. The doubts die on his tongue at the sound of his deep pained groan. He commits to it on the next breath, accepts that he’s going to suck his first cock, and tentatively takes in more of James’ with shivery need.

 _“Look at you.”_ James sighs, letting go of his cock to grip Steve by the jaw almost too hard, thumb tracing his lower lip shakily. “Never mind old age, those lips will be the death of me.”

Steve looks up at him from under his eyelashes, feeling overheated and out of breath, skin burning as if with fever. James is _undone_ above him, shakily leaning back against the back of the couch behind him and using his one hand to pull Steve forward. He’s thick and heavy on his tongue, a bit salty at the tip but otherwise tasting nothing like how he’d always thought a dick might taste. Not unpleasant or fowl, but like skin and soap really, with the faint aftertaste of brine and something inherently masculine.

“ _Oh_ , that’s it, Соси́ мой хуй, _ah,_ ” James murmurs, devolving for a moment into that lilting harsh language this Steve’s knows is Russian not Hebrew. He always leans towards Russian when he’s cursing, Steve’s come to learn. “So good, such a _good boy_ for me _.”_

Steve’s breath shudders and stops in his throat, ears burning at the words. The epithet is worse than being called Stevie in how instantly if makes him flushed. He thinks if his body weren’t such a capricious thing that he might get hard again at the feel of James in his mouth, the sound of his rough voice, and his gasps of pleasure that make Steve want to take more of him in until he gags, to draw more of those delightful noises from the man that’s done nothing but give to him.

It’s not bad, but it’s harder than Steve thought it would be. After the second time, James hisses and tells him to be careful of his teeth Steve flushes in shame—not over the act itself but over the fact he’s seemingly _bad_ at it. But, Steve has never been one to give up just because he’s bad at something, and really a challenge only makes him try all that much harder.

So he seals his lips around his teeth and opens his jaw until it cracks a bit, and does his best to move his head up and down the length of him without gagging. After a while, James’s breathing roughens almost to the point of sounding hurt and he takes one of Steve’s hands and places it at the base of his cock in a loose fist and Steve catches on real quick that he should use his hand on what he can’t put in his mouth.

Something warm and shivery like arousal burns in his stomach at the weight and stretch of it in his mouth, the taste and the smells and the noises James makes like this and it shocks Steve how much he wants more. He likes it. He likes sucking cock, and what does that say about him? Does it make him less of a man that he likes this?

He tries not to dwell on it, tries only to focus on James, and pulling more of those gravelly sounds from his throat, making his dick twitch in his mouth. He’s never seen or touched a cut dick before and he finds he likes rolling his tongue and lips around the spongey head, likes exploring the ridge of it with his tongue and making little bursts of salty pre-come slide from the slit.

James lasts a long time, much longer than Steve by far. He supposes it makes sense, considering his age, but it does make his jaw rather tired and uncomfortable by the end. When he comes it’s with a hand gripping Steve’s fine hair tight, a warning on his breath, and a whispering plea to swallow if he can. The thought is unpleasant, swallowing another man’s release, but Steve feels strange and floaty and rather intent on doing it if only because James _pleaded_ of all things.

The taste is not as bad as he’d thought it would be, but he still can’t manage to take it all. He has to pull back after the first spurt, and the rest of it dribbles down his chin or hits his face. James doesn’t seem to mind all that much that he fails to swallow it all though, going by the way he seems to be fervently swearing in Russian again. 

After, they sit on the couch and James pulls him into his lap and cleans him up with a handkerchief with slow gentle swipes in between kisses. They stay like that for a long while, and Steve likes how safe and comfortable it feels to lie against him, even though Steve knows he should find it demeaning to be sitting on his lap like a child.

Steve turns his face from his neck briefly to breath and his eyes fall upon his painting, still leaned against the wall, still just as obscene as before. He feels the unwelcome rush of instinctive, unwelcome, shame seeing it, and his breath stutters. Doubt begins to creep into his chest, no matter how much Steve tries to push it aside.

“Was that alright?” James says, and Steve thinks _that’s what I should be saying, isn’t it?_

James is a kind and good man. He seems to care about Steve in ways no one has since his mother died, and it makes his throat tight and his stomach clench strangely, and all at once Steve feels like he’s on the edge of a cliff and he’s about to jump off of it.

“I’m not a woman.” Is what Steve says instead of an answer, surprising himself as much as James he thinks when he feels James jolt under him. Steve pulls back to look into his confused eyes, confused and weary himself, before a low rumble of a chuckle sounds and James’ face cracks with an amused smile.

“Yes, I know you’re not a woman, Steve.” He says slowly, looking down at his chest in a pointed way that makes Steve flush. “I think your leavings on my sweater is proof enough of that.”

Steve ducks his head, cheeks burning, “I—sorry. About the sweater.”

“It’s alright,” James says quietly, and then pulls him away from his shoulder to look at him. “Steve…just because you like something in your ass, it doesn’t make you a woman. I promise, there’s nothing to be ashamed of for liking it. _I_ like it.”

For a moment Steve thinks he means that he likes having something in his ass too, but then dismisses the idea as silly. He must mean that he likes the fact that _Steve_ likes it. A man like him, there’s no way he’d like something like that, right?

Steve instantly looks away and clears his throat in embarrassment as if to dismiss it all, but James only pulls his chin back to press a deep kiss on him. “I mean it, Steve.” He says roughly, “I’ve been around on this damned earth long enough to know that women do nothing for me, and for better or worse I’ve come to accept that about myself. I don’t need you to play the part of a woman, I need you just as you are, a _man._ ”

Entranced, Steve finds he can’t look away from James’s intense gaze, even when his right hand starts moving all along his body.

“I _need_ your deep voice, so surprising to hear from such a small man,” James says, trailing a finger down his bobbing throat and then further to thumb along his nipples until they tent the fabric of his shirt and Steve’s letting out little gasps. “I need the wiry strength of your arms around me, the broadness of your shoulders against me, the hardness of your chest, your flat nipples.” His hand moves on, going further and further down until it’s skimming over Steve’s spent cock, loosely cradling his low hanging balls.

“I need your _cock,_ a very pretty one at that, and I need the heaviness of your balls in my hand…” James takes the lobe of his ear in his mouth and chuckles at Steve's stuttering gasp. “…now, does that sound like a woman to you?”

“N-no, _fuck_ …” Steve says breathlessly, and despite it being too soon for him to get hard again he feels his cock twitch in James’s hand. He can feel the smile against his neck as James rubs his grey-black beard against him.

“And do you? Do you wish I were a woman?” James asks, and when he pulls back there’s something almost _vulnerable_ in his gaze. “Do I not please you, to look at? To kiss?”

Steve sags against him, laughing as he flicks at the man’s soiled sweater. “You do. You obviously do.”

“Good, _motek sheli,_ I’m glad. You did so well today, Steve.” James whispers in his ear, and then smiles at him mischeviously, “Such a good _boy_ for me.”

Steve shivers. _Good boy,_ he’d said, twice now. It’s something parents say to their young children, _be a good boy now and eat your vegetables,_ or something that owners say to their dogs, _who’s a good boy? You’re a good boy! Now go get your ball!_

It’s not something you say to a grown man of nearly nineteen years, especially not while he’s sitting on your lap after coming all over your sweater.

Steve likes it anyway, and he feels in that moment that his shame is like coals, ready to burn, not with anger but with _arousal_. He shouldn’t want that, he shouldn’t _like_ that, but he does. He can’t deny it anymore, can’t hate himself for it even. This is who he is, this is what he _likes._

It makes him think back to all the times in grade school when the bullies had pushed him around and called him a fairy for being small and slight and lacking the muscle of the other boys. They had no right to assume such things just on appearance alone, and for a long, long time Steve had thought them honestly wrong in those assumptions.

He’d punched every person that’d ever suggested he was queer right in the nose, not because _he_ cared so much about whether he was or wasn’t, but because _they_ did, and Steve didn’t like to let anyone think they could look down on him and get away with it.

It seems they’d been right all along, though. Steve is most definitely queer, because what kind of normal man enjoyed doing all he’d just done and _not_ be? Steve’s still not sure how he feels about it all, isn’t sure if the shame he feels in his belly is his own feelings or just ones something he feels because he thinks he ought to.

He learned long ago not to put too much stock in what everyone else thinks is right or wrong. Steve promised himself he would follow his own moral compass after watching Jerry Fowler get beat up in the alley behind O’Malley’s just for trying to buy a drink in a ‘white man’s bar.’

He’d always liked Jerry Fowler, who was only a year or so older than Steve and couldn’t play with the other neighborhood boys either. Both of them were turned away from the stickball games because of things they couldn’t control; for Steve, it was constant childhood illness, but for Jerry, it was the simple matter of his skin being darker than everyone else on the block. He didn’t deserve to be turned away from O’Malley's for something like that, and he certainly didn’t deserve to be beaten for refusing to leave either.

Maybe it’s the same for Steve. Maybe he’s not lesser or _wrong_ for liking this…but then sleeping with men is a bit different than being a negro, he knows. After all, one is a rather vocally abhorred sin, and the other is simply a matter of perceived lesser ancestry.

 _“So.”_ Steve breaks the silence, trying to distract himself from his thoughts. “James, huh?”

Lips pressed against the side of his neck curl in amusement. “You don’t like it?”

“Less of a mouthful than ‘Mr. Sakhar’ at least.” Steve snorts, before carefully pulling back to look at James fully. They’re very close, nose to nose, and Steve can feel every puff of breath shared between them. “It’s not what I expected. It’s very…American.”

“Mm, good.” James says with a smile, “I wanted it to be.”

“You said you picked it…”

“Yes. And middle name too: Buchanan.” He says, with a smile. Steve can’t help but notice he doesn’t offer a last name, but he lets it go for now because he has a more pressing question.

“James Buchanan? As in…the 15th president of the United States?” Steve says with a disbelieving chuckle. “You know he was a terrible president right? Like not even in the top ten. You couldn’t have picked, I don’t know, Abraham Lincoln or something?”

“Well, I didn’t know he was a president at the time,” James says with a roll of his eyes. “It was just the only American name I knew when I got to the island, and I suppose I liked the sound of it.”

“Why?"

“I remember…I remember thinking, this is the sort of name a good man would have,” James says with a scoff and a shake of his head. “Don’t ask me why, _motek sheli,_ I just did. The strange fancies of youth, I suppose.”

Steve hides a smile in James’ neck, and can’t help but ask, “Where did you even hear about him? I mean, he’s not exactly a popular or even _well-known_ president.”

“Like I said, I didn’t know he was a president.” James sighs, “He was mentioned in some history book I read once, and they named him as the US ambassador to Russia.”

“Huh.” Is all Steve can say to that, and then peaks at him curiously. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me your last name too?”

“It’s _Sakhar,_ remember?” James looks at him with his patent straight face, but Steve can see the spark of mischief he tries to hide. “Or did I make you come so hard you forgot?”

“…right.” Steve huffs, trying to hide his flushed face with exasperation. “Keep your secrets then, ya big mook.”

“I have to keep you interested somehow.” James snorts as Steve rolls his eyes. “I wanted Buchanan to be my surname actually, rather than just my middle name. I would have done it too, had Natanya not threatened me with a knife over it.”

“A _knife?_ Well, that's…one way to solve marital disputes I guess…”

James just laughs, “We understand one another, even if it may seem otherwise from the view of an outsider. It would be her name too, being my wife, so I relented.”

“Well, you can rest assured if I want to argue with you I won’t pull a knife, I promise.”

“Oh, no, you’ll just glare at me with that stubborn mug of yours until I do what you want.” James teases. "Not that I'm complaining."

Steve barks a laugh, and James smiles at him. He can’t help but reach out and trace the deep crow's feet at the corners of his eyes, finding some measure of thrill to be this close, to be allowed to touch like this for no reason but that he _wants_ to.

“That’s a dangerous thing to say,” Steve says, voice dropping an octave. "A fella could take advantage of an offer like that."

James smile drops, eyes dark and heated. He pulls him forward into a deep, wet, kiss that leaves Steve gasping. “Good. I hope you do.”

Steve shivers, eyes hooded, blood molten under his skin, and he falls into another kiss, comforting and soothing. He holds on to James with all his might, sinks into him like one would a hot bath after a long hard day, desperate for relief. James pulls back, smiles against Steve’s own stubbled cheek, and Steve, tentatively, smiles back.

—

_“Are ye happy a stór? I want ye to be happy…”_

—

“We can stop whenever you want to, Steve.”

James tells him that a lot and Steve knows it’s true. Knows what would happen if he said 'yes, let's stop.'

He’d have to give up their weekly dinners, filled with easy conversation, comfortable in a way Steve’s never had with anyone else. He’d have to give up food so good Steve wants to cry over it sometimes, and the look of easy pride James gets when he compliments his desert.

He’d have to give up the expensive skeins of wool that he uses to make hats and scarves and mittens for the poor. He’d have to give up the good coats, the shoes made of custom leather, the feel of silk over his skin as James buttons a new shirt up to his throat, pressing gentle hot kisses there as he goes. He’d have to give up the envelopes of money every week that have led to Steve getting his own place in a slightly less seedy part of Brooklyn with real electric lighting and no roommate harping on him or walls made of newspaper.

He’d have to give up the easy affection he’s come to crave, the hand petting through his hair or the feeling of an arm around his neck hugging him in close against a warm body. And he’ll have to give up kind smiles and encouraging words and all the things Steve’s come to look forward to in his terribly lonely life.

He’d have to give up kissing him, and touching him and _seeing_ him, seeing James smile, seeing him laugh.

He’d have to give up doctors sent to his door when he sends a message to James’ place that he can’t make it, that he’s sick with a fever or rattling lungs or some other ailment. He’d have to give up the worried fretting of someone that sends him get well chocolates instead of flowers because he knows he has allergies. He’d have to give up someone who _cares._

He’d have to give up _James._

“We can stop whenever you want to—”

“Don’t stop.” Is all Steve answers, always with desperate kisses.

"Don't stop," He says, but what he really means is, " _Don’t leave."_

—

_“Yeah, ma...I think I'm happy...”_

—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tentative translations:  
> Соси́ мой хуй - suck my cock (russian)
> 
> Motek/motek sheli - sweetheart/my sweetheart (hebrew)
> 
> Let me know if these are incorrect if you speak these languages :)
> 
> Oh, and I forgot to mention before but the address that James lives at? That's a real place in Brooklyn that I picked if you want to look it up on google maps and see how I envision the outside of their Prospect Park place :) I'm sure the building is broken up into smaller apartments now, but in this fic, the whole thing is one house which means James has some Monaaay
> 
> ALSO: so excited for the next chappieeeee but I won't tell you why hahaha >:)


	8. Stay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "James..." Steve whispers, reaching for him. "I miss you."
> 
> "Why?" James asks as he smooths a gentle hand through his hair, "I'm right here with you, Stevie."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been excited for this chapter since I wrote it months ago! Hope you all like it ;)

**2011**

_Midtown, Manhatten, NY_

It takes surprisingly little time to get used to being called Grant by the other volunteers, but Steve doesn’t forget who he is like he does when he’s Captain America. It feels like it’s a victory to be helping and doing good as _Steve,_ even if they’re all calling him _Grant._

Here, surrounded by the constant dust that’s hovered over Manhattan since the Battle of New York, Steve is just another body. He doesn’t wear Natasha’s terrible wig again, but the photostatic veil keeps people seeing just another face in the crowd even with his rather iconic physique.

“Grant! We need those muscles over here! I need help moving this door.”

Steve looks over at Lydia, a volunteer EMT who’d been partnered with ‘Grant’ in their search for trapped or injured survivors. It’s hardly been 24 hours since the attack, and still, they haven’t found everyone. Not long enough to change the search strictly to the ‘dead’ rather than ‘survivors’ but they’re swiftly reaching that time limit.

“I thought I heard someone calling for help,” Lydia says, voice shaking as she ducks under a fallen beam into the walkway that Steve’s cleared for her.

“The structural engineers said these buildings on this block are stable enough for now, but be careful,” Steve says as he eyes the cracked ceiling above them. “Where did you hear the voice coming from?”

“It was coming from this— _shhhh!_ Listen, you hear that?”

Steve stands still as a statue, quiet and alert as he listens. He hears the crumble of cement, the tapping of the building settling, the distant sound of—

 _People._ Steve thinks with a sharp breath. He follows the noise, keeping Lydia behind him and carefully navigating the rubble with perhaps a bit too much ease for a normal man. “Hello? Can you hear me?”

Again that distant noise of shouting, and Steve follows it to a blocked stairwell. “Is everyone alright?” Steve calls down through a break in a massive pile of fallen piping and venting.

“We—injured—” A male voice calls up, distant with every other word unintelligible. “About—hour ago—shifted—ceiling collapsed! Please, she—medical help!”

“We’ll get you out as soon as we can!” Steve calls down, “Can you tell me how many are down there?”

“—two of us!” Comes the half-heard message. “—too much—stairwell!”

Lydia, breathing hard, catches up with him moments later. “We’re here to help you get out, please remain calm and don’t move!”

“—no exit—just stairs!”

“ _Rats_ ,” Steve says as he realizes that the only way they’ll be getting these people out is through the very precarious stairwell situation.

“There’s no way we’ll be able to move these pipes. It’s too dangerous.” Lydia says in agreement, well used to his strangely old fashioned curse words by now after a whole day of working with him in the cleanup zone.

Steve eyes the pipes, just barely holding up the broken ceiling, wood and cement, and exposed wires everywhere. It’s not the sort of situation where they can easily clear the way down the stairwell, not without knowing if it’ll cause some kind of collapse.

“This is Grant Stephens, on 313 W 36th Street. We have trapped survivors here, two people, one injured, trapped in a basement level stairwell. We need reinforcements to secure this area from collapse, ambulances, and the structural engineer” Steve says through the radio that the volunteer coordinators had given him, “Ceiling collapsed an hour ago according to the trapped group, a further collapse could be imminent.”

 _“Copy that Grant,”_ Comes the answer, _“Reinforcements in route, please stand by.”_

Lydia moves in closer to an open gap in the fallen piping, breathing picking up as she looks through the cracks. Abruptly she pulls away and looks at Steve. “Grant…Grant look!”

Quickly, Steve peers between the pipes, and his heart drops. He can just see a figure moving around, climbing up over the broken pipes and exposed wires. Worse…he can smell smoke.

“Sir! Sir, please stay where you are, help is on its way!” Steve shouts worried by the creaking noise he can hear all around the. The man’s head jerks up, though he can’t see much else but dark hair.

“There’s smoke!” The man says, more understandable now that he’s closer. It’s when he turns that Steve sees the form of an obviously injured older woman being held against the man’s side, and the smoke rising slowly up from behind them. “The wires, I think they caught fire!”

“Oh, _shit,”_ Lydia says, and it’s then that the smoke becomes really noticeable, even drifting all the way up the stairwell to them. She pulls her mask out of her pocket, securing it firmly around her mouth. “The area’s too confined. They’ll suffocate if we wait long enough for the crew to get here.”

Steve backs up, eyeing the debris critically, mind moving at a million miles an hour. He’s never been more grateful for the serum given ability to calculate the angles and physics of any given action, using it to find and anticipate just exactly how he’s going to make enough space to get the two civilians out of the stairwell safely. He'll have to move _something_ but what?

_Pipe, beam, right vent. No, collapse. Beam, post, beam, pipe. No, not enough space. Post, pipe, beam, left vent. Yes, success, that’ll work—_

A sudden rumble shakes the building, streams of dirt sieving down on their heads as they all freeze. Someone screams from down the stairwell and Steve rushes over to the crack in the wall of debris to look down at the civilians. He can’t see them, just a giant fallen beam and the broken edge of collapsed stairs.

“Are you alright? Are you both alright?” Steve calls down, as Lydia starts a rapid-fire conversation over the radio with their expected help.

No answer, just another groan from the building. “I need you to answer me, sir! Are you alright?”

The sound of distant sobbing echoes up to them, and it makes Steve’s blood run cold.

“No!” Comes the response from a choked off male voice. It cracks on the word. “Ma! Ma, I’ve got it, I can hold it, please, open your eyes for me. Please, please stay with me, ma!”

“We don’t have time to wait for help,” Steve says in a tense hard voice. He doesn’t even look at Lydia as he jumps to begin moving the debris in calculated precise moves.

“Grant! Grant you could just make it worse, stop—!”

“I won’t! I know I won’t, so long as I move this post at a 25-degree angle over to that pipe, and then break that beam off just here the structure will hold. Then I just have to move the vent on the left to be perpendicular to this pipe and the weight should distribute evenly and balance itself out.”

Something in his voice must reach Lydia, since she quickly backs up, looking at him with wide eyes like she’s never met him before, despite working with him nearly all day in close quarters.

“Trust me.” He says as sincerely as he can. “I can get them out. I can make a hole.”

A scream echoes up the stairwell, and Steve jumps into action. The walls are shaking, the dust falling over him like rain, and the stench of smoke makes his nose and eyes burn. There’s a strange static humming across the skin of his face, making his facial muscles twitch and burn. Steve wants desperately to pull the photostatic veil off and throw it away, but there’s no time to do anything but _work._

Finally, he makes a hole, and he can hear Lydia say in a low awed voice, “Oh my god, _just how strong are you?”_

 _“Don’t move!”_ Steve shouts down, “I’m coming down!”

Carefully, Steve makes his way down the debris covering the stairs, down three flights to where the smoke is at it’s worse. His lungs are burning, his face numb, and Steve can only just make out a hunched over figure under a giant fallen beam.

He’s crouched under the beam in the next moment, shoulders against the metal and pushing with his legs to throw the beam off but then—

“No! No don’t!” A voice cries. Steve freezes, looking down at the man the beam is pinning down to the wall by his left arm, he takes in his dangling legs with alarm. “My ma! Please, get her out first!”

Steve looks over to the woman he points to, who’s laying down on the ground next to the man and looking…not good. Still, noticing how the beam is pinning the man’s arm and body against the wall, keeping him from falling off the edge of the collapsed stairs.

Steve reaches out with blinding panic grabs the man's legs, pulling them so that the civilian’s lower body is secured on the edge of the stairs and not dangling precariously. He’s suddenly glad he hadn’t lifted the beam immediately, he would have certainly fallen to his death and even now he could still bleed out once the beam is removed.

“My ma! Please!” The man says, shoving at Steve with his good arm desperately. For a long strange moment, Steve doesn’t want to let go, is irrationally terrified that if he does the man will fall and he’ll never see him again…and isn’t that a strange thought? Steve’s never met the man before in his life, and yet he feels a visceral panic at the idea of losing him.

 _It’s just the adrenaline,_ Steve tells himself absently, _I just don’t want more people on my conscience than I already have._

Jumping over the beam, Steve puts his fingers against the fallen woman’s wrist. Nothing. He tries her pulse at her neck. Nothing. Immediately he starts chest compressions, but the smoke is too thick for her to be breathing in anything good, so he changes tactics and picks her up and throws her limp form over his shoulder.

“I’ll be back, I promise, just hang on!” Steve says as he leaps up the stairwell with superhuman agility and speed.

“Thank you, thank you, _thank you—“_ The man chokes out behind him on repeat, coughing and wheezing through the thickening smoke.

“Oh god, Grant!” Lydia says as Steve ducks through the hole he made at the top of the stairwell and places the non-responsive woman at her feet.

“Not breathing, no pulse. I'm going back for the second civilian.” Steve says as Lydia quickly falls to her knees beside the injured woman and starts chest compressions. “Need a tourniquet!”

“It’s in my bag!” Lydia gets out through sharp quick breaths as keeps doing her best to restart the patient’s heart below her.

Steve grabs the tourniquet and leaps down the staircase even faster than before. He finds the male civilian passed out, a steady stream of blood staining the wall and ground around his left side. “Hey, hey! Wake up pal, you gotta stay with me. You’re not done yet, y’hear me?”

Slowly, the man’s eyes roll over to Steve as he tugs the tourniquet up around his bicep as best he can. He tears his own mask from his face and secures it around the civilian’s face. “There ya are. Good, keep lookin' at me, that’s it. This is gonna hurt, sorry—!“

Sharply Steve tightens the tourniquet, and the man screams out in sudden pain, the cry trailing off into a sob. “Sorry, sorry pal, has to be done. This next part is gonna be worse.”

“N-no, st-stop—“ The man slurs, hazy with pain and oxygen deprivation from the inescapable smoke and heat of approaching fire. “—hu-rrts, _fuck_ …”

“I know, I know.” Steve murmurs as he gets himself into position, shoulder back under the beam as he keeps holding the civilian’s pain-filled blue eyes. He doesn’t want to look away. “Just keep looking at me alright? I’m right here, I’m with you, just breath for me.”

The man nods shakily, taking a deep breath through the mask on his face, and Steve gives him the best approximation of a smile as he can. “Alright, that’s good…ready? 1…2…3!”

Steve lifts the beam off fast and throws it down the stairwell to their right, ignoring the blood-curdling cry of pain from the hauntingly familiar man bleeding out before his eyes. Quickly he grabs the man up in his arms despite his pained writhing and only just moves them in time as a section of the stairwell crumbles and falls where their heads just were.

“Grant! Grant, we need to get out of here _now!”_ Lydia cries from above them, and Steve thinks _Yeah, ya think?_

He doesn’t answer, just focuses on traversing the quickly disintegrating stairs beneath their feet and scaling the debris up to the main floor. Steve has to roll them both through the hole he’d made originally, which had collapsed some since he’d made it. The sharp edges of wires and jagged metal paneling scrape and catch on Steve as he gets them through, and he doesn’t even stop for a minute before he’s heading for the exit of the building with Lydia hot on his heels dragging the elderly woman by her armpits.

They make it out just as the sound of ambulances reaches them, along with the echoed rumble of the entrance they’d just come from collapsing. Steve’s a little out of breath, but not nearly as much as he should be so he plays it up a little for Lydia as she looks up at him in shock. He tries to make it look like it’s hard to hold a six-foot man in his arms, but he’s never been the best at acting.

“... _o_ _h my God_ , your name isn’t really Grant is it?” She gasps through wheezing breaths, and it’s only then that Steve realizes that the numb tingling has left his face at some point. Sure enough, when he reaches up and touches his face it’s nothing but skin, no photostatic veil in sight.

“That doesn’t matter right now.” Is what Steve says, “Right now all that matters is that we get these two medical attention—“

The doors to the ambulance bang open and Steve sighs with relief even as he looks at the blood-stained man in his arms with worry. Lydia stands quickly and starts waving and shouting to the EMT's, directing them through the rubble and dust-filled air to their location.

“Hang in there, pal, just a bit longer. We’re gonna get you to a hospital.” Steve says as he does his best to put pressure on the stump, causing a loud sobbing groan to come from the injured man.

“We’ll take it from here!” An EMT shouts as they drag two gurneys in behind them. They immediately start in on the older woman by Lydia’s feet, who she quickly makes room for as she updates them even through her panicked exhaustion.

“Patient is one Winifred Barnes, driver's license says forty. Non-responsive on arrival, show’s evidence of trauma to the head and likely smoke inhalation, administered chest compressions and attempted resuscitation for ten minutes now with ongoing asystole—“

Steve zones out at the medical speak, even as the EMT’s approach him and start asking a million questions about the injured civilian in his arms that he can’t answer. He doesn’t know his name, or his age or anything besides how he found him—even though, strangely, it feels as if he should.

As soon as they try to take the groaning man from his arms, Steve tenses. He feels an instant panic to see the bleeding broken man taken from his arms, and it only gets worse when the man’s eyes snap open and he starts thrashing in the EMT’s arms, reaching out and gripping Steve’s hand desperately.

“Sir, you’re safe now, let go and we’ll transfer you to the ambulance for—“

“No. Don’t go, don’t go, don’t leave me—“ The man says, hands gripping Steve’s so hard a normal man might have broken bones. _“Stay—!”_

“Sir, let go, we need to get you medical attention as soon as possible—“

“No, no, _no, no—“_ The man wheezes, eyes rolling in clear blind panic. “Where’s my ma? Where’s—“

Steve tries to use his moment of distraction to pull away, but the man’s grip instantly tightens, his breathing going rapid as he shouts, “Stay with me, please, please don’t go, _stay with me!”_

“Sir,” One of the EMT’s says to Steve, “We don’t have time for this, just walk with alongside us until we can get him in the back.”

“—s _tay with me, stay—"_

“Hey, _hey,_ pal—“ Steve interrupts, following alongside the gurney as the EMT’s move them towards the ambulance. “I’m with you. I promise I’m not going anywhere.”

“You’ll—you’ll stay?” The man sobs out, and Steve feels his shaking hands loosen somewhat on his own. Steve tries his best to smile at him, even through all the chaos.

“Yeah, pal…” Steve says, and as they make eye contact he feels his stomach flip. There are words on the tip of his tongue, familiar as a half-forgotten dream, and he falls to an unavoidable urge to speak. “…I’m with you till the end of the line.”

As soon as the words leave his lips the civilian’s body goes limp and calm, and the EMT’s rush the gurney away and into the back of the ambulance with renewed speed.

"I'm sorry, sir, there's not enough room—you'll only get in our way." The EMT says as they load the man into the back and jump in themselves. Steve frowns but stays back even as it feels like a betrayal to leave the man alone when he'd just promised not to leave him. But, there's no choice, he doesn't want to get in the way of the people trying to save his life after all.

And then, as he's standing back feeling useless and guilty, just before the doors close, that's when he hears it. 

“ _Stevie.”_ Comes the whisper through the doors, gravel rough and louder than any other sound, despite the mayhem. 

Later, he'll think back on this and explain it away, will decide that the whisper was just a figment of his imagination. But at the moment Steve hears it, he can think nothing, feel nothing, except sheer blank shock.

Steve blinks, stunned and confused as the ambulance doors close entirely, blocking his view of the blue-eyed dark-haired stranger that he’s just saved from certain death. The whisper fades away, seeming more a dream in the chaotic stillness of the rubble around them, overshadowed in the face of the ever-present sound of sirens.

Did he really hear—no. No, he couldn’t have, he didn’t even know who Steve was. Had he just imagined someone calling him that? Had that voice just been in his head?

 _I imagined it,_ Steve tells himself, heart pounding, _I must have imagined it._

—

_102 Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY_

Steve loses the time it takes him to travel from Midtown to Brooklyn, and when he wakes from his dream like state it's to the sound of a horn blaring and screeching to a halt, moments away from hitting him. Steve sends a stuttered apology to the angry man in the taxi and hurries across the street.

By the time he's safely inside the apartment he's already drifting again, and he stands in the entryway of the kitchen staring sightlessly at nothing for several minutes. Outside, the distant sound of city life, muted by the late hour and the park’s calming influence. Inside, only Steve’s breathing can be heard, along with the ghost of a voice calling his name.

_Stevie…_

With a deep shuddering breath, Steve comes back to himself and shakily sits at the kitchen island, dust flying up from the chair. The box of cake mix sits untouched and unopened in front of him and he has the sudden urge to fling the thing across the room in a burst of shivery, helpless, anger.

He doesn’t even know why he’s angry really. Though there’s plenty of reasons to choose from when he thinks about it. He dies for his country, wakes up to find himself in a city and world so changed it feels just as alien as the ones he had to defend it from, not to mention how everyone he knew is dead or old enough to hardly recognize.

And yet, despite it all, despite how much it’s changed, Steve can still see _his_ city in the cracks on the sidewalk, in the crowds of people aggressively minding their own business, in the smell of hot dog’s wafting off of street corners…and it hurts to see that city burning right now, it _hurts_ to see it’s people suffering. All he’s ever wanted was to protect this country and it’s _people._

He can hear the EMT’s calling ‘dead on arrival’ echoing in his mind, mocking him, telling him he's failed. He can hear that young man asking him to stay, frightened and disoriented, and the look of fear when the doors had closed and Steve had left him alone in the ambulance…he can hear him calling him something he hasn’t been called since before the war, since _James_.

_Stevie…_

It’s no wonder he’s hearing things now. He really is going mad.

Steve rubs his face roughly, feeling layers of dust and grime smearing under his fingertips. He needs a bath, or actually a _shower_ —one change in the future that he actually likes would be the increased ease of personal hygiene, for sure. Maybe that’s all he really needs, to clean up and get some real sleep and—

He’s on his way up the stairs when he sees James’ portrait and for some reason, his legs freeze him in place.

_“—stay with me, stay—"_

He’s shaking when he comes back to himself enough to stumble back to sit on the bottom step of the stairs, breathing hard. James stares back at him from the portrait, eyes soft, mouth curled up in a smile, and for some reason…for some reason his mind tries to put the face of that injured man over James, their voices overlaying each other’s, one Brooklyn accent, one Russian.

First hearing things, now _seeing_ things too? God, he really does need some sleep.

It takes him a while, but he gets up the stairs, his super-soldier serum seeming to finally be giving out under the force of his lack of sleep and constant physical exertion over the past few days. When he gets up to his bedroom he comes back to himself to find that he’s brought James’ painting up with him and he leans it carefully beside the bed with wet eyes.

He lays down on his side and stares at his face until his eyes grow too heavy to keep open, hearing a dozen strange echoes of the past and the present all merging together.

The voices follow him into fitful, strange, dreams of his imaginary friend, a smiling boy sitting at his sickbed, turning into an old life-weary man kissing his brow with heart-wrenching tenderness. 

"James..." Steve whispers, reaching for him. "I miss you."

"Why?" James asks as he smooths a gentle hand through his hair, "I'm right here with you, Stevie."

"Stay...please stay..." Steve says, grasping at his shirt desperately. But his hands are weak and the cloth slips through his fingers like water.

"I'm right here, Stevie." James says again and then leans in to kiss him soft and slow and comforting.

Steve closes his eyes to savor it, and when he opens them James is gone, and there's nothing there but an empty room and a silent portrait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was that 'end of the line' bit forced? Idk I went back and forth on whether to keep it in or not...


	9. Survivors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I know you think war some great, necessary thing and maybe it is sometimes...it isn't...war isn't heroic, Steve, people are."
> 
> "I know that." Steve mumbles. "But only a hero would be willing to go to war for their country, for their freedom. War makes heroes."
> 
> James shakes his head sadly at that, and Steve can tell that he disagrees. "War doesn't make anything, except survivors."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a tough chapter to post honestly...I feel like it has a few views on war and heroes that could upset some people so I would like to preface this chapter by saying I am not in any way discrediting the sacrifices or actions of those who went to war or died fighting for their country. They are heroes, I genuinely believe that. However, I do think that heroism and patriotism are very easily weaponized through propaganda and media and that war shouldn't be glorified even when it is necessary, which is what I was striving to make a point of in this chapter (hopefully without offending people). If you think these talking points will upset you be warned! If you want to skip it, just go directly to the '2011' portion of the chapter.

**1936**

_102 Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY_

Despite their intense new intimacy after their relationship’s sexual turning point a month ago, Steve has yet to see James naked. Or more specifically, he’s yet to see James without his _shirt_ on, as he’d always been so careful to keep his shirt on, even if it meant it got dirtied by their frenzied exchanges of pleasure. It drives Steve a bit mad when he realizes it’s likely because he fears how Steve will react to his missing arm, and instantly he makes it his new mission to get the man fully unclothed.

It starts simple enough, with James whispering in his ear filthy endearments as they fretfully clothed against one another on the couch, calling him _motek_ and _darling_ and asking Steve to ' _let me see all of you.'_

So Steve, taking the opportunity for what it is, does exactly that, even though the idea of being so bare and vulnerable with all the lights still on makes him uneasy. With his usual blush and ducked head, he unbuttons one of the fine shirts that James had given him, unclips his suspenders, shimmies his trousers down his legs, drops his drawers, and kicks them to the side, and even toes off his long socks. By the end of it, he’s utterly bare before the man, naked as the day he was born, and James is tenting his own pants something fierce.

The sight of him so visibly aroused never fails to give him a rush, the knowledge that _he_ made him like that. Steve can’t hardly stand it sometimes, the thought that a scrawny fella like him could draw the eye of someone so obviously gorgeous, despite his age. Not that Steve has seen pictures of James when he was young, but he’s sure he’s only gotten more ruggedly handsome as the years have passed. The thought of James as a younger man makes him smile wistfully, half-remembered dreams of a boy at his sickbed flitting through his mind, a life with a loyal friend at his side.

“You can touch y’know.” Steve says, and tries on a smile he hopes is inviting rather than painfully self-conscious. “I’m not one of my paintings.”

James laughs breathily, grey eyes trailing heatedly down his body. “No, you are not. You’re far more beautiful in person, aren’t you?”

He rises from the couch they’d been sitting on and reaches out with his one good hand to trail his fingertips lightly across his skin, from shoulder to hip. Steve watches his pupils dilate, watches how he reaches down to adjust himself with a shuddery sigh and _wants._

“The way you make me feel, doll…like a damned teenager again,” James says with an awed shake of his head as he reaches out to grab Steve’s waist. The look of pouting confusion on his face when Steve dances backward and away is enough to make him laugh.

“I want to see you too.” Steve says, “Fair’s fair, James.”

James looks suddenly bashful, which isn’t at all what Steve had expected. “I’m an old man, _motek sheli._ There’s nothing here to see.”

Steve frowns, backs away again when James reaches for him. At his put out face Steve just raises his chin and gets that stubborn look in his eye that used to make his ma cross herself in frustration and pray to the Lord for patience. “I think I’ll be the one to decide that, mister. Now off with it.”

It draws a crooked smile from James at least, who always seems to find Steve’s moments of bullheadedness endearing rather than frustrating. “…alright, if that’s what you want, punk.”

James slips his suspenders off his wide sturdy shoulders and when Steve makes a move to help him with the buttons of his shirt he just gives him a firm look and backs away a step to do it himself. He’s quick and efficient about it, obviously well-practiced in unclothing himself one-handed, which Steve supposes he would have to learn to be. His silk shirt flutters to the ground, shining in the low lights of the apartments electric lighting, his pants in a pool at his feet, and his underwear quickly joins it.

Then they’re both bare, standing in front of one another with nowhere left to hide their secrets.

Steve’s never stood and looked at a naked man for anything except artistic endeavors before. This is nothing like that, standing and admiring a man without the distraction of putting lead to paper, knowing he has full permission to look and linger and take pleasure in that looking.

He’s an older man, obviously, but Steve can’t help but think he’s held his figure well, despite the years. Sixty years old but still his shoulders are strong and broad, his stomach flat if soft around the middle—but if anything it’s a comforting sight to see him so well-fed when Steve knows he can look down any alley in New York and see concave stomachs brought on by the hard times they live in. His eyes hover curiously on the white scars that slice through his chest hair, though he doesn't ask about them. 

Steve’s seen his thighs plenty, as he takes his cock in his mouth and digs his fingers into the rock-solid muscle of his legs on either side of his head, but seeing them with the whole package makes them all the more striking. They’re so thick, Steve can’t help but think he could fit two of his own legs in one of James’s. Then his eyes trail back upwards, to his bared arms and shoulders. His right one is corded with thick muscle and dark hair, but his left is just a scarred and wasted stump of a thing, barely a hand long. Steve’s eyes hover on it, and when he brings a hand up to trace along with raised mottled scars James doesn’t stop him, does nothing but stare at him with hooded dark eyes.

“How did you lose it?” Steve can’t help but ask softly.

“…war.” He whispers back, and his right arm comes up to slowly draw them together until their bodies are so close not even air can get between them.

“I thought you left for America before you could be enlisted?” Steve recalls, hand still flat and warm against the raised scars on what’s left of his left arm.

“Not that one,” James whispers. “No, this one was American. The _‘great war.’_ The _war to end all wars.”_

James smiles mockingly, and Steve frowns to see it, knowing it’s the same war his father had fought and died in. “You’re a hero then, for serving your country—”

“There was no hero’s to be found in those trenches. Only death.” James interrupts sharply, the words are harsh, bitter. Steve knows he should try to lighten the mood, but the part of Steve that looks proudly on the sacrifice his own father made want’s to push. “It wasn’t the first pointless war I’d seen in my life, and I doubt it’ll be the last either.”

Steve rankles a bit at the word _pointless_ but doesn’t comment on it.

“You did what had to be done. It was…it _could_ be the war to end all wars…” Steve says softly, hesitantly. He sees James’s eyes soften when he meets them, and he flushes. “Maybe there will never be another war.”

“I hope you’re right, Steve…but I fear you’re just naive.” He says, and kisses the side of his head and breathes deeply. “More and more I see Jewish refugees arriving in Brownsville from Germany _…_ the papers say nothing of it, but I know the situation for my people in the east only grows worse there with every passing day.”

It’s true that there’s an obviously clear tension in Europe right now, especially with Hitler’s rise and the most recent summer Olympics held in Germany. The tension, the anti-semitism, is never openly remarked upon but it’s there, between the lines, ready to be seen if one only looks for it.

“I know you won’t want to hear this…but I’m grateful your health would keep you from the draft should history repeat itself,” James says, and it’s would be enough to make Steve scowl if not for the waver of real emotion in his voice, the depth of his obvious fear for Steve. "I know you think war some great, necessary thing and maybe it is sometimes...but it isn't...war isn't heroic, Steve, _p_ _eople_ are."

"I know that." Steve mumbles. "But only a hero would be willing to go to war for their country, for their freedom. War makes heroes."

James shakes his head sadly at that, and Steve can tell that he disagrees. "War doesn't _make_ anything, except survivors."

Steve flinches at that, "Are you saying we should do nothing then? That we should just lay down without a fight?"

"I didn't say that." James says sharply, "I'm just saying that it's an easy thing to weaponize, this idea of heroism and dying for your country—"

"My father was in that war, y'know." Steve interrupts, voice thin and tight. He's never told James this and he can feel more than see the tension that instantly enters his frame. He's tempted to pull away, but he doesn't, instead, he just holds James' eyes like a challenge. "He died fighting for this country, for our freedom, there was no _surviving_ for him. My father was still a _hero."_

"Oh Steve...I didn't mean..." James' voice cracks on the words and he looks so unbearably _sad_ , "With a son like you, I'm sure he was, but I don't think _war_ made him that. War just made sure it was the _last_ thing he was."

If it were anyone else Steve might have popped him right in the nose for saying that, for even _suggesting_ that his father's death wasn't a heroes death...but as it is Steve doesn’t press the issue, doesn’t bristle at what he’d usually take for an insult. He knows by the soft look in his eyes that James doesn't mean it that way, James who is nearly thrice his age and seen more of war and pain in his life than Steve can even begin to understand. If anyone has earned the right to look at him like he's naive, Steve supposes it would be this man.

"I'm sorry." James says as Steve looks away from him, "I meant no offense, I just..."

"It's okay," Steve says hoarsely and clears his throat. Slowly he lets himself fall into James' chest, breathing slowly until his body is lax and the atmosphere is filled with no more tension between them. James trails whispering fingers down his boney spine, tracing unknown shapes and words against his skin. It strikes him then how silly they are, to be having such a serious conversation while so completely naked.

Then again...there's something so fitting about being so vulnerable, so bear to each other, while speaking so honestly and openly. Like this conversation would have ended in blows should they have been armored in their usual clothes.

“You couldn't have been young enough to have been drafted back then,” Steve says after he does the math in his head. He very carefully holds back from saying 'because you're older than my father would be now.' "You had to have been nearly forty."

“Oh, I volunteered, ironic as that is. I'm sure it sounds quite contradictory after everything I've said tonight.” James says with a dark laugh. “You’d think I'd forgot that I’d left Russia to avoid fighting and dying for a country that hated me—”

“This country doesn’t—“ Steve tried to protest, but James cut him off with a dark look.

“Even after years of living in America, my place, my _family's place_ here was precarious, Steve.” He says with a frown, “I couldn't apply for citizenship until I'd been living here for fourteen years, which at that point I'd just reached, but even then I had to give five years notice of intent to apply. _Five years,_ and who knows if my application would be accepted and passed? My son was the only one among us that was a ‘real’ American, at least in the eyes of the law.”

Steve holds him tighter as James presses his face into his neck, kissing his jugular and says, “But…they were offering naturalization for volunteers and their families. So I joined the 77th Infantry Division, and I went overseas and I fought with the Lady Liberty painted on my helmet, and I killed boys half my age despite promising myself that I'd never kill again.”

"...again?" Steve can't help but ask, and when he pulls back James looks haunted.

"I told you, Steve, that heroism is an easy thing to weaponize." James says blankly, "I spoke from personal experience."

"I...I thought you deserted." Steve stutters out, thinking of the war in Russia that James had told him he'd left for America to avoid. It seems so long ago now, that day in the restaurant where James had first propositioned him.

"Yes. I wanted a better life, the 'American Dream.' A life built off of hard, honest work for a good man. I...I wanted to be James rather than..." James trails off and then shakes his head and doesn't finish his sentence. Steve notices how he edges around the question, notices the things he's obviously leaving unsaid, but for once he doesn't push it. 

No, if he's honest with himself, he's afraid of what the answer would be.

James chuckles darkly, looking bitterly amused. “In the end, it wasn’t honest work or being a ‘good man’ that bought the ‘American Dream’, but rather our lives signed away in the name of ‘patriotism.’ It only took an arm from me…but for others? For others, it took their deaths to change the blood of their families from red to red, white, and blue.”

“…I’m sorry,” Steve says hoarsely, for lack of any better words. It's such a helpless thing, to see someone you care about hurt so deeply and have nothing to offer for their pain but useless apologies.

“For what?” James whispers, pulling back with a little furrow between his brows. “You have nothing to be sorry for, _motek_.”

Steve frowns, “I’m sorry that it happened, that you were hurt. I’m just…sorry. I can’t imagine the things you’ve seen.”

James presses their lips together, needy and desperate, only pulling back when both of them are gasping for breath. 

“I hope you never can, Stevie."

—

**2011**

_102 Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY_

Steve sleeps fitfully, dreams full of old memories and guilt-ridden regrets, but despite his tasing and turning, it’s clearly enough that when he wakes up the next day he feels much less likely to have hallucinations from lack of sleep. He takes a shower because he’d been too tired to the night before and then he heads out to get a cup of coffee and some breakfast because he doesn’t think he could stand to cook in that too-different-kitchen without having a breakdown. Not to mention the whisper of his name that keeps echoing impossibly everywhere he goes in the house, haunting his every footstep.

He’s halfway out the door when he realizes he doesn’t have the photostatic veil anymore and he belatedly pulls the hood of his sweatshirt up and don’s some dark sunglasses. He looks over his shoulder with vague embarrassment, as if Natasha will be lurking in an alleyway ready to jump out and berate his sad attempt at disguise.

With no real destination in mind, he starts walking in a random direction, keeping an eye out for a little diner or coffee shop as he goes. Most of the places he passes look too fancy for his taste, with fancy signs and crowds of well-dressed people lining the door, though one baker with highly decorated deserts in the window does make him stop and stare with a pang of longing.

By the time he finds the sort of place, he’s looking for it’s near mid-morning and Steve’s stomach is practically eating itself. It’s different than the little dinky diners and sandwich shops he remembers from his childhood in Brooklyn but the general sense of ‘cheap’ is recognizable across the ages, even if there is more plastic and harsh lighting than there used to be.

“What can I getchya, pal?” The harried-looking man at the counter asks in a thick Brooklyn accent that has Steve smiling and his shoulders easing.

“Just a coffee and a bacon egg and cheese.” Steve says, and deliberately lets the roll of his own accent come out to play, making it sound more like ‘Just a cahfee and a baconeggandcheese.’

The man gets to work quickly, no smile, no small talk, just the way Steve likes. He sits down at one of the sticky tables with fake wood grain and can’t help but look up at the mounted television in the corner. He’s only a little startled to see his own face there.

“…pictured here is the famous ‘Captain America,’ part of the so-called ‘Avengers’ team seen fighting in defense of our city during the battle in midtown just days ago.” A bright-eyed newscaster says as a floating image of Steve sans mask shows up beside her face. “The location of the members of this team have been highly debated since the battle ended, with many calling for them to be found and held accountable for the destruction left in their wake. One such person calling for their arrest is Senator Bingham.”

The screen cuts then to a balding man dressed in a sharp professional suit, surrounded by a gaggle of microphones. He speaks emphatically but with a calm surety.

“…these so-called ‘heroes’ have to be held accountable for the destruction of the city.” He says, and Steve frowns, “This was their fight, where are they now?”

The screen cuts back to the newscaster, whose brow is furrowed in clear disapproval. “But despite the Senator’s clear position of disapproval, many on the streets have nothing but well wishes and praise for the Avengers.”

Again, the screen cuts away from the newscaster to that of a young blonde woman that looks vaguely familiar to Steve.

“Captain America saved my _life._ ” The woman says with a smile, “Wherever he is, wherever _any_ of them are, I’d just…I would want to say _thank you.”_

“Indeed, wherever they are, we at Station 5’s stand in support and give our thanks as well. But _where are they?_ That is the question of the week among both supporters and opponents of the Avengers actions.” The news reporter says, “One which our station is eager to report may have an answer for. At least…for one of them.”

Wide-eyed, Steve watches as the feed cuts to sloppy phone footage, the camera aimed up as if held from waist height. His own face is just barely visible but it’s clear that it’s him even though the grime. His hand clenches on the edge of the table beside him hard enough to splinter the wood.

“Thanks to an anonymous volunteer helping with the cleanup and rescue of survivors, Station 5 came upon this footage of a man going by the name of ‘Grant Stephens’ who looks shockingly similar to that of Captain America, otherwise known as ‘Steven Grant Rogers.’” The newscaster continues and then turns to her co-anchor with a smile. “Not the most creative of false identities wouldn’t you say, Jack?”

“Well, Captain America isn’t known for his spy work after all.” Her co-anchor says with a smirk, “I think we’ll have to give him a pass, Samantha.”

“That’s right Jack, and so we will, as it seems by all accounts that our resident ‘man-with-a-plan’ is still out fighting the good fight, only this time it’s not on the war front but in our own backyard, helping those in need,” Samantha says, shuffling the stack of papers in front of her. “In fact, Station 5 discovered that, just prior to the footage’s recording, the ‘Grant Stephens’ or _Captain America,_ had just rescued a man and his mother from the rubble of a nearby building. We have yet to get much information on the survivors, a Mr. and Mrs. Barnes, though, while the status of the woman has not been confirmed, we _do_ know that the young man was reportedly brought to the nearby Mt. Sinai hospital to recover—“

“Hey! Sir!”

Steve startles, blinking rapidly over at the man behind the counter, who’s staring at him with narrowed eyes. Slowly, he releases his hand from the splintered wood table.

“I don’t care if you _did_ save the city, you’re payin’ for that table.” The man huffs with a roll of his eyes. “Now ya want your food or not?”

“Sorry, um. Oh, jeez, that’s…sorry about the table, I…forget my own strength sometimes.” Quickly, Steve stands and takes the food, suddenly grateful that the little ‘bodega’ as they’re apparently called now, is mostly empty. The man chuckles a bit as he sees him look around nervously.

“Relax, pal, no one’s lookin. Better get out of here though before the lunch rush, or you’ll be mobbed before I can say 'scram'.” He says, ringing him up on his register. “That’ll be six bucks. Plus whatever ya can spare for that table.”

Steve opens his wallet and, with a little grimace at the shock of just how much money he has on him, takes out a couple hundred bucks and hands it over. “Here, will this be enough?”

The man slowly takes the cash with a look of amusement. He counts out five hundred dollar bills and then laughs in disbelief. “Y’know, I grew up learnin’ about you in school. Steve Rogers, Captain America, born and raised in Brooklyn…I’m startin’ to think they made that part up.”

Steve scowls at that, but before he can defend himself the man just pushes three of the hundred dollar bills back over the counter and says, “Only a chump would hand over that much money without haggling at least a little, and Brooklyn don’t raise no chumps.”

“I…don’t really know how much things cost yet nowadays.” Steve sighs, feeling his face heat with embarrassment. “If I tried to haggle I’d be trying to get you to sell me that coffee for five cents.”

“ _Five cents.”_ The man laughs loud and barking at that, shaking his head with disbelief, “What a world we live in, eh? You look young enough to be my grandson and you’re talkin’ like my grandfather.”

Steve somehow finds it in himself to laugh at that, “Yeah…what a world.”

He leaves after and walks down the street eating his sandwich and coffee, but hardly tasting it. Six bucks for it and he can’t even enjoy it. All he can think of is that grainy cell phone footage, which he can only guess must have been taken and sent by Lydia, the volunteer that’d clearly recognized him once he’d lost his photostatic veil. That same anger he’d felt the other night rises up in his chest again, frightening in its intensity.

By the time he gets back to the apartment, after seeing several TV’s plastered with his face through windows of shops he passes, he’s intensely aware of every passing person that even glances twice at him. He decides with a sigh that it’s probably best he finally do what Natasha had told him to do from the beginning—stay in and relax.

 _Well…maybe not relax,_ he thinks as he stands at looks at all the dusty chairs and dirty floors of the house he will now be living in, and then rolls up his sweater sleeves with purpose. He makes some old rags from the leftover sheets that had once covered the furniture and fills a bucket with water and soap.

He wishes suddenly that he’d bought some of the fancy mop’s or cleaning supplies he’d seen in the store, but figures going out again would probably be a bad idea right now. Still, Steve spent the majority of his life cleaning on his hands and knees with a rag, and that was when he was all skin and bones—it certainly won’t hurt him to do it the old fashioned way now that he’s six foot of muscle and super serum.

By the time he’s done the hardwood floors are shining, the rugs are hung out the upper balcony window to be aired out, and he’s managed to figure out the washer and dryer that he found in one of the rooms on the second floor to wash all the sheets and blankets. He’s reminded of just how large the house is while cleaning, and suddenly feels terrible for the maid James’ had employed to clean it back in the day.

The sun is just going down now, and Steve stands back and looks over his newly cleaned house. It feels more like a home now, despite the terrible mustard yellow furniture that’s supposedly from the ’70s and all the alien chrome kitchen appliances that make Steve grimace.

The only thing left to do now is…relax.

Steve sighs to himself as he goes into the kitchen to make himself a sandwich, and then sits with it at the dining room table. The bread of the future is sweet and overly soft he's found, the prepackaged cheese tastes waxy and strange, the meat overly salty and almost rubbery…but it’s food, and Steve has eaten far, far worse when food and money were scarce. The 'worst' food of the future, even strange as it is, is still better than the worst things he ate in the slums of Brooklyn.

The thought makes his eyes drift up to the kitchen counter, and he stares long and hard at the box of chocolate cake mix still sitting out. He finishes his sandwich, throws the dish into the sink—not the dishwasher, he has no idea how to use the thing and memories of James’ broken china make him weary to try—and then he grabs the box of cake mix and just…holds it.

_Stevie…_

That broken, fearful voice echoes through the house again, at once young and old, taunting him into madness. Steve does his best to ignore it.

 _I should stay in,_ He thinks blankly, _I should make this damned cake._

He knows, logically, that’s the thing he should do. That’s what Dum Dum would tell him to do. Hell, that’s what _Natasha_ would tell him to do.

It’s not what he does.

Instead, he takes the box, stuffs it out of sight into a random cupboard, and is out the door in the next minute, head pounding and mind a mess of contradicting emotions and thoughts. But one thing is sure—there will be no relaxing for him tonight. Not with the haunting memory of that man calling his name, asking him not to leave him, dogging his every thought.

He knows he should stay in. He knows that what he’d heard was impossible. He knows the similarities between that man and his James’ are the result of his own loneliness and an overactive imagination.

He knows but…but he just needs to _see_ him again, to confirm it, to force his mind to realize they’re two different people before he goes mad.

—

_Station 5 said he’d been brought to Mt. Sinai Hospital…_ Steve thinks to himself as he walks through the doors of the hospital’s lobby. It’s bustling and near chaotic, which is to be expected considering Manhattan was basically a war zone less than a week ago.

He stands there dumbly as the nurses and other patients move around him, realizing that this is the first time he’s been in a civilian hospital since…since before the serum, he supposes. It brings him back sharply to his days of visiting his ma at the hospital, walking her home after her long shifts in the dark, as if he could protect her from the unsavory types with his boney fists and sheer stubbornness. He doesn't know how long he stands there, lost in memories, but it's the nurses, with their strangely cut pants and shirts, their hair pulled back simply without a curl or hat in sight, that brings him back to the present, back to his reason for being here.

It occurs to him then that his plan to find the man he’d saved might have been rather poorly thought out. After all, he doesn’t even know the man’s full name, and how many ‘Barnes’ could there be in New York? The thought brings with it a sliver of deja vu, a half-remembered memory…like he’s forgetting something.

He shakes it off after a moment of grasping at the intangible feeling, back to the desolation of hopelessness. How the hell is he supposed to find a ‘Mr. Barnes’ out of the thousands of people here, the thousands of other families trying to find missing loved ones among the John and Jane Doe’s of New York.

“Can I help you, sir?” A harried nurse says from behind the desk. She squints at him and a slice of apprehension goes through Steve at the thought that she might recognize him.

“I…I’m looking for someone.” Steve manages, “I don’t know his name first name, just that his last name is ‘Barnes.’ He was brought to this hospital yesterday evening and—“

“Ste—Grant?”

Steve startles, turning his back on the weary nurse to face…

“…Becca?” Steve murmurs in shock after a moment of trying to remember her name. He blinks rapidly at her for a moment before putting together the pieces. “Are you here to visit your…I mean is your family here?”

For a moment Becca’s face screws itself into an intense sadness, but in the next, it quickly goes very carefully blank. Steve feels his stomach sink.

“My mother’s dead.” She whispers, “But my brother is…well, he’s out of intensive care now at least. It was touch and go for most of the night…”

The words are delivered with a flat sort of indifference that Steve’s used to hearing from the survivors of raids in France, people who had been left with nothing after the bombs descended on their homes and family, unable even to process their next steps for the sheer shock of it all. Steve wants to reach out and give her comfort but isn’t sure if it’d be welcome from a stranger.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, and hates the helpless feeling of knowing the words aren’t enough, but that they’re all he can offer.

Becca blinks back to herself then, a smile twitching up and then falling away in the next moment. “Thank you…I…”

Steve waits politely as she clears her throat and turns to the side to gather herself. When she speaks again it’s with more composure. “I know why you’re here.”

That surprises him. “You…do?”

Becca sighs looks briefly over his shoulder at the nurse Steve had nearly forgotten about, and then she gestures with her head down the hall. “C’mon, we can talk more in my brother’s room. He’s knocked out cold, he won’t mind us talkin’.”

Steve hesitates as she walks away, expecting him to follow, but in the end what does he have to lose? He follows her, and as he does his thoughts churn with a sudden dread. Little things falling into place as he walks, more and more sure the longer he thinks on it. A mother, dead, a brother, alive and recovering in this very hospital, and…

…she’d nearly called him ‘Steve’ before she’d switched to ‘Grant,’ he’s sure of it.

“You’re brother…he’s the one I’m looking for isn’t he,” Steve says softly, remembering with a grimace the limp woman that he’d carried out of the building, the EMT’s calling dead on arrival. “And…your mother is…”

Becca stops suddenly, looking over her shoulder nervously. They’re alone in the hallway now, just a few nurses passing by without even glancing in their direction. It suddenly occurs to him just why she’d wanted to get somewhere more private, somewhere without the prying eyes and ears of a nurse.

“You obviously know who I am too,” Steve says with a wry smile. “Thank you for that by the way. Not outing me in the middle of the lobby, I mean.”

“Yeah…” She whispers, shivering on the edge of that awful blankness again. Steve watches her shake it off as she looks up at him with wet eyes. “I…I just didn’t want to make a scene. I don’t want any more damn attention than I already have, y’know?”

A sudden guilt hits him then, remembering the news coverage he’d seen just earlier in the day, knowing she must have fought tooth and nail to keep the media away from her brother’s hospital room. “I’m sorry for, I mean, I didn’t mean for everyone to know it was me that got your brother out of there. If there’s anything I can do to—”

“Stop.” Becca says and gives a little disbelieving huff of laughter that surprises Steve. “As if I’d be upset at you for saving my brother’s life just because it’s made us a little TV famous.”

Becca worries at her lip for a moment, ducking her head. “Thank you, by the way. For saving him. Never thought the one to find them would be a random guy I met in the grocery store though. What a world, huh?"

Steve shakes his head, smiling briefly at the fact that it's the second time he's heard that in one day.

"Could you…tell me what happened?” Becca asks him a moment later, voice wavering.

Steve frowns, “It’s…it’s not a pretty story.”

She barks a harsh laugh at that, her lips twisting into a smile that’s the very opposite of happy. “Nothing that’s happened in the past week is a _pretty_ story. As much as all those Avenger obsessed groupies and overly indulgent news stories try to make it out to be. I'm surprised they haven't worn the word 'hero' out by now.”

A little grimace comes over his face at that and Becca notices it with a flinch. "Not that...I mean I'm not saying you don't deserve to be called a hero I just..."

"No, it's alright, I get it." Steve says, and he does. _He does._ "Besides, I didn't do it to be called a hero."

"I know. Obviously. If you did you wouldn't have been lying about your name all that time." Becca says and then gives a little scoff, "Though really, 'Grant Stephens?' Not very creative."

Steve laughs a little at that, rubbing the back of his neck. "It has...sentimental value. I used to go by that name among...friends, back in the day."

"So you wanted that again. I get that," Becca says with a watery smile. "My full name is Rebecca but my mom always pronounced it the Hebrew way, 'Rivkah.' Eventually it just devolved into Riva...she was the only one who ever called me that."

"I..." Steve starts to say, starts to _apologize,_ but stops. Becca doesn't hear him anyway, eyes already distant and glassy as she nervously wrings her hands.

"Would you tell me?" She asks suddenly, looking up at him with large wet grey eyes. Steve feels pierced through by them, more painful than any bullet to the chest. Then, like she's been poked with a cattle prod, she starts pacing, running her hands through her already messy hair, dark circles under her frantic eyes. “I just need to know, I need to—Bucky isn’t awake to tell me, and I just need to know how she— _”_

“Bucky?” Steve says sharply, bewildered. She comes to a stop in her pacing, looking up at him with a shaky smile.

“More sentimentality. It’s…it’s what I always called him, my brother. It was kind of a joke between us. When I was younger I would call him by his middle name to annoy him, but it was too hard for me to say right so eventually it just,” Becca shrugs, “became ‘Bucky.”

“…and…what was his middle name?” Steve manages to say despite the fact he can’t seem to get enough breath in to speak louder than a whisper.

Becca looks at him strangely then, confused and a little distracted. “It’s Buchanon. James Buchanan Barnes.”

It’s like the air’s punched out of him. Like he has asthma again and he can’t make his lungs work for him. Steve stumbles backward a step to lean against the wall, and he doesn’t notice the suddenly worried look on Becca’s face because the world is sparkling with black and white dots and it’s all he can do to keep standing.

_“James Buchanan? As in…the 15th president of the United States?”_

James Buchanan Barnes. _James Buchanan_ Barnes.

_“I remember…I remember thinking, this is the sort of name a good man would have,”_

“Steve?” A voice whispers in front of him softly with a desperate air. Steve looks up into the worried face of Becca, but he doesn’t really see her even as his eyes focus on her.

“Steve, are you alright? Should I…should I get a nurse?” She says shakily, and that’s what snaps him back to reality. Not the threat of attention or a nurse, but the _fear_ in her voice. He’d frightened her, this young overwrought woman who had enough on her plate to deal with already.

Steve takes a shaky gasp in, closing his eyes a moment to take hold of his emotions and stuff them down into a box. He can’t be _Stevie_ right now. This isn’t the sort of place he can break down. 

“Sorry.” He croaks out, “No, no nurse, I’m fine.”

Becca hovers close to him, eyes red and nose sniffling. Her voice shakes and cracks when she speaks. “You…you sure?”

Steve nods. “You just…surprised me. I. I used to know someone with a very similar name.”

She gives a hesitant nod, looking confused but less tense and worried than before. She takes a look around nervously and when Steve does the same he finds a nurse staring at them as she slows the push of her med cart down the hall. In the next moment, he feels Becca’s hand on his arm, pulling him away from prying eyes and down winding halls and increasing door numbers.

When they stop Steve shudders to see the little name plaque beside the door.

_> James Buchanan Barnes_

_> John Doe_

“He doesn’t have his own room?” Steve says with a frown once he manages to look away from the name plaque.

Becca opens the door softly and steps inside with a shake of her head. “No. Too many people injured, too little room. But the other guy’s in a coma the nurse told me, so it’s not so bad really.”

“You should have your own room. You both deserve privacy.” Steve says firmly, which makes Becca grimace.

“I don’t know how this all works…” She says in a small voice, and it reminds Steve that the girl can’t be more than sixteen at the oldest. “I just know the staff told me private rooms were more money and our insurance wouldn’t cover it.”

Steve frowns at that but doesn’t say anything more on the subject. He couldn’t possibly offer to pay for the room or their medical bills, because that’s presumptive and ridiculously invasive on his part…but he wants to, with a rather frightening intensity. He puts the thought aside for further consideration later.

Becca pulls two chairs from beside the door and moves to bring them into the left section of the curtained off room, but Steve grabs them easily for her when she can’t quite manage to pick them up all the way without the legs dragging. He sets them down against the wall beside the bed and then he can’t help but look at the man lying unconscious on the bed.

In the bright florescent lights of the hospital, he looks overly pale and small. The bedsheet collapses unnatural around his left side, where his arm would be, and it makes Steve’s gut flip over. He can’t help but make the comparison between this ‘Bucky’ and his James.

He swallows dryly around the ball in his throat as he looks his fill, desperately finding all the points on his face that differ from _his_ James. The short brown hair without a touch of grey, the unlined face of a youthful man in his early twenties, the stubbled face of one used to shaving every day, the slighter, less muscular, form…

…and under it all, he can’t help but find familiarity in the shape of his mouth, the curl of his eyelashes, the broadness of his brow, the lack of his left arm.

It feels strange to be staring at a man so clearly asleep, completely unaware of his observation. But that’s why he’d come here, wasn’t it? To prove to himself that they weren’t as similar as Steve’s mind was trying to convince him they were?

So far, he was failing to prove anything but his own insanity because, despite the obvious age difference, it _feels_ like…

He looks away sharply, vision blurring, wishing suddenly that he hadn’t come. Becca meets his eyes as he turns and he knows in that moment she wants to question his reaction, knows he has to say something to avoid it.

“You really want me to tell you about what happened?” Steve manages to get out hoarsely, and instantly Becca’s curiosity shifts away from him. She grabs his hand when he sits beside her and Steve is careful to keep his eyes on his lap rather than on her unconscious brother.

“I know what you’re thinking.” She says as her eyes trace his face. “That I’m just a kid, that I shouldn’t hear such things. All the nurses and the doctors are thinking it too, I can _tell._ But I’m not a little kid, I’m _sixteen._ My mother is dead and for once my brother is going to need _me_ to be the strong one when he wakes up. I _need_ to know what happened. _”_

Her hands shake in his but when he looks in her eyes he sees steady strength, the kind that he remembers seeing on his ma’s face when she’d insisted to know how he’d gotten his newest black eye, even sick as she was and unable to get out of bed.

“I don’t think that. I don’t think you’re just a kid.” Steve sighs as her grip tightens to the point it would hurt a normal man. “But sometimes…we don’t always know what we’re asking for, when we ask for the truth.”

 _“Please.”_ She says, voice cracking. “I just…have to know how she…”

Her words trail off, but Steve just nods in understanding. Instantly her face falls with relief, and he sighs.

He starts talking, holding her eyes the entire time. Her hand in his falls slack eventually, and by the time he’s done her eyes are red and damp and he can see from the tenseness of her jaw that she’s desperately trying not to cry.

“…I’m sorry.” Steve says, unable to find a more fitting word. He squeezes her hand in his. “I…there was nothing I could do.”

“I know. I don't...I don't _blame..._ ” She chokes out. “Excuse me I…I have to go to the bathroom.”

She goes to pull her hand from his but in a moment of impulse, Steve holds fast. She looks up at him, eyes wet and lips quivering, looking like a fragile vase teetering on a ledge, about to fall. He remembers when he’d first met her in that grocery store, how he’d felt that odd sense of deja vu, how he’d thought it was just her Brooklyn accent that made her feel familiar. It’s only now that he’s looking for it that he can see the memory of James in her face, and he wonders what that says about him. If he’s truly seeing things that aren’t there because of his desperate loneliness in an unfamiliar world.

“I know we don’t know each other very well but…” He says quietly and sees her face pinch sharply. “You don’t need to be alone right now if you don’t want to be.”

She looks between him and the door, face quivering between emotions in lightning-quick twitches. Then, like the cracking of an egg, she lets out a long high pitched whine and falls forward into his shoulder. Instantly, Steve puts his free arm around her shoulders, holding her gently as she cries.

As Steve stares ahead, eyes set firmly on the unconscious Bucky, and thinks he understands, _truly_ understands, for the first time, what James had meant so long ago. Hero or not, the ones left behind or the one's coming home...war made survivors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO, hopefully you liked the chapter! Let me know what you thought in the comments :)
> 
> Some comments: the 77th infantry was real and was often called 'the immigrant army.' Super interesting history there if you're interested enough to look it up!
> 
> I'd like to point out that the news story that Steve sees in this chapter on TV with the Senator and the blond girl is actually taken from the end of the first Avengers movie. I always liked that part where they show the aftermath of the battle, though I thought that the damage done to NYC was kinda underplayed, which I've tried to address in this fic. Like seriously, you're telling me that a war breaks out in NYC, one of the most populous and dense cities in the world, and only 74 people die according to Civil War? I just...don't see it. I mean unless that meant only 74 people died from because of the Avengers actions? That would make more sense.
> 
> Sorry for the rant! XD Love to know what you guys think about that theory though!


	10. Masks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Natasha.” He says with a sigh, relaxing his fighting stance.
> 
> “Steve.” Natasha returns blandly.
> 
> “Should have known.”
> 
> “Seems like you did.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one took a bit, it was originally written in Steve's POV but then I decided to rewrite it in Natasha's POV! Hope you guys like :)

**2011**

_Mt. Sinai Hospital, Midtown Manhatten, NY_

Nancy Épier slides on her scrubs with little excitement, hands steady but tired as she clips her name badge onto her breast pocket. She cleans her glasses perfunctorily and puts her blond hair up in a quick messy bun on top of her head and then hardly takes a moment to look in the staff locker rooms mirror before she’s out the door to do her rounds. She likes night shifts because of the lack of contact with people it affords her, dealing with mostly asleep patients and a less than full staff count. The halls are empty, the hospital wing is almost quiet but for the echos of nonslip nursing shoes on squeaky floors and the distant beep of monitors.

It’s right on the edge of the evening and the night shift, and most of the staff are tired and waiting for their replacements with hooded eyes. They don’t give her a second look as she passes by the front desk on her way to her first patient's room, and in turn, she hardly spares them a glance. That’s just the sort of person Nancy is. No nonsense, direct, always focused on her job rather than her personal life. She doesn’t have many friends here, and she’s new and rather standoffish so of course, no one approaches her.

402b the little plaque on the wall reads, and Nancy stops in front of it to peak in the window with a sigh at the sorry sight within. The patient, a young male in his early twenties, lies in the hospital bed unconscious and pale. At his bedside is his supposed only family relation, a sister, who lays slumped in her chair in fitful slumber, her face red and swollen from tears. Quietly, Nancy steps inside, careful not to make too much noise as she walks to the foot of the bed to check the sleeping patients' folder, eyeing his vitals with shrewd eyes.

“How’s he doing?” A hoarse voice asks from the corner, and Nancy startles just a moment off beat. As she turns around to look at the man behind her and she sees the man’s eyes sharpen on her, suspicious, and the corners of her lips _almost_ twitch.

“Oh! You scared me, sitting in the dark like that!” Nancy says, hand to her chest as she eyes him in return. He’s broad-shouldered, blonde, blue eyes…he’s nearly painfully attractive, Nancy thinks with an awed sort of distraction. The sort of man one sees in movies rather than on the street, and the thought makes Nancy pause.

“Do I know you?” She asks, but then she shakes her head before he can respond. “Sir, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave. This is a _private_ room, in case you didn't know. Family only.”

The man opens his mouth to respond but stops abruptly when he’s interrupted by the quiet voice of the young woman sitting at the bedside of the unconscious patient. “He’s fine. I let him in.” She says as she sits up from her slumped repose.

Nancy’s lips press into a firm line, eyeing the strangely familiar man in the corner and the clearly unconcerned way the younger sister looks at him. Finally, she nods, accepting the man’s presence without further remark.

“I’m just here to check on his vitals.” Nancy says, “He’s shown marked improvement as far as I can see…he really just needs to rest and recover now.”

“He woke up the other day.” The girl says with a sigh of worry. “Only for a moment though. He looked at me and smiled, and then he just fell right back to sleep.”

“Ah. He wasn’t awake, not really. That sort of threshold consciousness is common after surgery as extensive as his. It’s a good sign though, even if he can’t keep his eyes open for more than a few minutes.” Nancy says with a smile. “It’s good that you were here when he woke, even if he won’t likely remember it when he wakes for real later.”

Nancy gives another pointed look to the man in the corner. “It’s why we only allow family into private rooms like this. Less chance of the patient panicking when they wake in a strange place.”

“Were it not for him we wouldn’t even be here at all, St-Grant.” The woman says sharply, but Nancy notices how she shifts nervously at her obvious stumble over the man’s name.

“Becca—“ ‘Grant’ starts to say, but stops when the woman gives him a sharp look. It’s rather amusing to see such a large man so easily cowed by such a young girl.

“You saved his life. Period.” The sister says, “Besides. They didn’t care who was in here when we were in the other room. They only care who comes in now that we’re in the private rooms.”

“Well, then we can be grateful then that you have a private room.” The supposed ‘Grant’ says with a rather shifty look to the side.

“Yes, I’m glad the insurance came through on that at least…but…the last nurse that came in said he’ll be going through physical therapy?” The sister asks as she turns to look at Nancy again. “Is that…I mean, is that going to be expensive? Not that it _matters,_ of course, he’ll need it so we’ll have to—I just mean…our insurance isn’t…”

“Yes, I know Ms…Barnes.” Nancy says after a quick look at the chart in her hand to remind herself of the surname. She then chances a glance towards the shadowed man in the corner, even meets his eyes for a moment too long to be normal. “There’s no need to worry about payment. A generous donor has decided to see to it all medical expenses will be paid for.”

“What?” Ms. Barnes gasps, sitting up straight in her seat with shock. “…paid for? All of it? But…who would…”

Nancy turns just slightly to look over her shoulder, giving ‘Grant’ a quick and fleeting smirk, a peek behind the mask, before smoothing her face back into a placid look of concern. She sees the man’s eyes turn sharp and bright, but in the next moment, she’s turned away to look back to the patient's sister. Ms. Barnes sits up a little straighter and when Nancy catches her gaze she finds tears in her eyes. The young woman looks over Nancy’s shoulder at the quiet, still, man in the corner with clear understanding.

“It was…it was you wasn’t it?” She breathes wetly, standing and taking a fumbling step towards the man in the corner. “And my mother's funeral arrangements too…they said it was all paid for. We have no family left other than each other, and every time I asked they’d always just say ‘a generous donor’ paid for it, but…god, I should have known. Of _course_ it was you.”

Nancy glances between the two of them, edging out of their direct line of view but not leaving the room entirely. She should give the two a moment of privacy but she doesn’t, instead fiddling with the monitor to the side of the patient's bed, surreptitiously listening but acting as if she isn’t, the very picture of a nosy nurse stuck in the middle of good juicy gossip. She can _feel_ the man in the corners eyes, blazing against her shoulder, tracing over her messy hair and her callused hands as she flutters about her busy work.

“I just…wanted to help.” The man says, and Nancy’s shoulders relax as his eyes leave her.

“ _Course_ you did.” Ms. Barnes laughs around a hiccup. “That's all you do, isn’t it? Help.”

“I’m…sorry.” The man says, sounding vaguely uncertain.

“If you’re waiting for me to refuse your money then you’ll be waiting all night, St-Grant. I’m not so prideful a person to refuse charity when I need it.” Ms. Barnes huffs a laugh. Nancy slides her eyes between them, watching Ms. Barnes wipe her face of the last of her tears and smile as she shakes her head. “Besides, I don’t need your apologies. I told you before. You saved my brother. You have nothing to apologize for.”

Grant inclines his head, looking away from her towards the unconscious man that Nancy is supposedly checking in on. “He lost his _arm,_ and…and your mother is…”

Abruptly Ms. Barnes face scrunches, but it’s not in grief, it’s in _anger._ “She’s dead, but the only ones to blame for that are them fuckin’ _aliens,_ not _you.”_ She laughs harshly, looking to Nancy commiserating. “ _God._ Listen to me. _Aliens,_ fuck…”

Nancy gives her an understanding smile when Ms. Barnes aims a rather hysterical look at her, “I think that encapsulates most of New York’s feelings at the moment, Ms. Barnes.”

“Indeed. And what did you say your name was?” Grant suddenly says, taking a step towards her. “I’ve been here a while now and I don’t remember seeing you…”

“You wouldn’t have, I only do the night shifts. The names’ Nancy. Nancy Épier.” She says, placing the patient’s chart back in its place at the foot of the bed. She turns as she places her hand on the door handle to leave, giving them both comforting smiles. “Mr. Barnes seems to be doing quite well, I think there’s a good chance he’ll wake sometime tomorrow, but only time will tell. If you’ll excuse me, I have other rounds to do. Until later.”

“Thank you,” Ms. Barnes says, returning her smile with tentative hope, but Nancy can only feel the icy stare of the man behind her raising goosebumps up on the back of her neck.

—

Nancy Épier leaves Mr. Barnes room at a quick click, turning several corners at random until she opens a door and slips inside. The security cameras see only a nurse changing out of her scrubs and leaving with the rest of the nurses as the shift finally changes from evening tonight, and Nancy Épier is easily forgotten in the crowd as she slips out of the hospital and down the winding dust-filled streets of a broken Manhattan.

She turns corner after corner, and with each one she sloughs off another piece of Nancy Épier. Two blocks from the hospital, the glasses come off and go into a nearby trashcan. Three blocks from the hospital her blond wig is pulled off, releasing a curtain of red. Four blocks from the hospital and her bag of scrubs in dumped in an alleyway. Five blocks from the hospital and—

—an arm, strong and wiry against her throat makes her grin sharply even as a hand covers her mouth. She grabs his pinky finger and bends it sharply backward, heel going down hard on the instep of the man behind her, elbow digging hard into immovable abominable muscles. He hardly even flinches, but it’s enough for her to slip from his grasp, sliding away bonelessly like a cat through an impossibly small hole.

“Well, that didn’t take long.” She says with a grin, taking off the final piece of her mask, the shimmering photostatic veil making her skin tingle as she slides it off and into her purse. “Perhaps you’re not as helpless at surveillance and infiltration as I thought.”

Upon seeing her face the man who’d attacked her freezes, face going slack with annoyance rather than shock, which only serves to make her smile wider.

“Natasha.” He says with a sigh, relaxing his fighting stance.

“Steve.” Natasha returns blandly.

“Should have known.”

“Seems like you did.” She compliments, and Steve just gives a little half-shrug.

“I knew you weren’t what you said. Thought you were press honestly.” He says, and at her quirked eyebrow he continues, “No normal nurse would know I was the one who’d paid off their medical bills…also, ‘Épier?’ You must know I learned French during the war, it’s almost like you _wanted_ me to figure out who you were.”

Natasha tilted her head at him with a coy smile but doesn’t reply, simply turns and begins walking away. He quickly falls into step with her without her having to ask, seeing her smile for the invitation it was.

“Why are you following me.”

“Why shouldn’t I be?” Natasha says liltingly.

“Right. Forgot for a moment that privacy isn’t a _thing_ in the future.” He says with a near scowl.

“Not when you’re a time-traveling supersoldier whose face and location have been all over the news for the past week, no.” Natasha says flatly. “How’s that going for you by the way?”

Steve sighs, looking annoyed. Natasha sees his face shift in the next moment to a sort of self-deprecating humor. “Terribly. You did tell me.”

“I did. And yet you’re visiting the hospital of the man whose life everyone in New York knows you saved without even a _bad_ disguise. Obviously, you don’t listen.” Natasha says, “Also, you owe SHIELD one photostatic veil now. You know how expensive those things are?”

“Expensive, I’m guessing.” He says drolly. “Look, what’s done is done. They saw my face, they know I’m still in New York…what am I supposed to do, just hide inside?”

“Yes,” Natasha says, and the kicked puppy look he gives her makes her wish she had a rolled-up newspaper so she could swat at his nose. “Bad super soldiers don’t get outside privileges.”

The look he sends her is delightfully scathing. “I’m not a _dog.”_

“Relax, Steve, I’m just joking. Or didn’t they have jokes in the thirties?” She says and is almost charmed by the pout it prompts.

“Then why are you following me like you’re just waiting to trick me into a van and haul me off to a SHIELD facility?”

“Really, Steve, use your head. I’m the one who told you to _leave_ that place.” Natasha sighs with a roll of her eyes. “Why on earth would I want to bring you back?”

Steve narrows his eyes at her. “Why on earth you do _anything_ you do is beyond me Natasha.”

She smirks a little at that. It’s always good to know she can still cultivate an aura of mystery when she needs to. “I’m following you to make sure you don’t make a bigger mess of this than you already have. Already every news outlet, printed and online, have been trying to sniff out your location and hound you for details on the Battle of New York.”

“Would it be so terrible for me to answer some of their questions?” Steve sighs.

“Yes. You’re a terrible liar.”

“Sorry, let me rephrase that. Would it be so terrible for me to answer some of their questions _honestly?”_

Natasha stops and turns to look at him dead in the eye. “If one of those questions was ‘why was there a nuclear missile headed straight for New York City in the first place, then _yes,_ it would be _quite_ terrible.”

Instantly Steve goes grim and hard jawed, his expression switching unnervingly quick to that of Captain America, so different from the more soft one of Steve Rogers. “One would think if this country can’t be honest about what they’ve done in order to keep the peace, then they might start rethinking the decisions that led to needing to lie.”

“Someone has to make the tough decisions. Not everyone can understand the things we must do in the shadows so that they can have their pretty things.” Natasha says. “It’s the harsh truth of this world, whether we like it or not. All we can do is make sure we’re on the side of those that make those tough decisions for the right reasons, the right _ends.”_

Steve sighs, shaking his head. His voice is soft and sure when he speaks next. “My ma always said if you can’t talk about it in the light of day then it’s not worth doing in the dark.”

“Kinky.” Natasha says with a smirk that makes Steve frown harshly and turn away from her. She follows behind him at a slower pace, undaunted by his dismissal but feeling vaguely contrite at the tense unhappiness of his shoulders, the clear war happening behind those guileless blue eyes.

She thinks of the red in her ledger, of what she’s done to try and clear it. She wonders what it would be like to feel so strongly about doing the right thing not because of guilt, but simply because. Steve frowns grimly, and she sees something in his eyes then that makes her tilt her head in interest, wondering at her own assumptions of the man once more.

“What would you say, if they asked?” Natasha says suddenly, making Steve pause for a moment and look over his shoulder at her. "About why there was a bomb heading to New York. About why Stark had to redirect it himself into the portal."

“…I’d say the bomb had a malfunction in its targeting system which led Tony to have to redirect it manually, but it was always meant to go through the portal.”

_Translation: I’d lie._

Natasha stares into his eyes, searching. Not for the first time, she begins reevaluating her understanding of Steve Rogers. “Why?”

“Telling the truth wouldn’t be the right thing to do right now.” He doesn't look away, but his shoulders slump. “The people of this city, _this country,_ are afraid enough after everything that happened. Aliens, portals in the sky, the Hulk. They don’t need to fear the people that should be protecting them on top of everything else. It’d cause chaos.”

Natasha, after a long-drawn-out stalemate, breaks their stare with a nod. She knows he can see it for what it is, the respect in it, the understanding, the regret at the circumstances of this grey immoral world.

Steve returns her nod, and then says, “Will you quit following me around now?”

With a considering tilt of her head, Natasha gives a low hum before flashing an almost girlish grin. She feels a bolt of mischief at the way his shoulders tense at the sight of it. “Nah. Think I’ll tail you a little while longer.”

She almost laughs when he lets out an honest to god _groan_ of annoyance. “I’ll just have to start spending more time in places where you can’t follow me. Like the men's room.”

“Careful there Steve, a lady might take that sort of thing as a _challenge.”_

The look Steve gives her at that is definitely one to remember, and Natasha can’t help but wish she could take her camera phone out and snap a picture. But she won’t. Not because she _couldn’t_ do it, fast as she is, but because she knows Steve would hate it and she’s just nice like that.

“Well…if you’re going to keep following me around, might as well get some food out of it.” Steve grumbles. “You’re buying me shawarma. You all left me with the bill last time.”

“Deal.”

—

_102 Prospect Place, Brooklyn NY_

“Well, this is certainly cleaner than I remember.” Is all Natasha says as she strides into the apartment like she owns the place. She drapes herself easily over the horrendous muddy green couch in the center of the living room, feet propped up on the oddly shaped coffee table. Their take out shawarma sits in brown oil-stained bags on top of it.

“Certainly fewer sheets than before. I almost wish you’d kept them on, to be honest.”

That draws a little snort from Steve, who eyes the yellow-orange midcentury armchair distastefully before he sits in it. He looks like a giant sitting in it, legs practically folded in half with how low to the floor the seat is. Natasha’s lips quirk.

“Me and you both. I do not understand the point of furniture this uncomfortable.” Steve mutters as he starts to dig into their take out with gusto.

“Aesthetics,” Natasha answers, grabbing tin foil wrapped shawarma filled gyro. “Surely an artist like you would understand that.”

“Is this what passes for stylish now?” Steve says with a grimace.

"It was in the seventies." She says with a snort. 

“Well, I'm glad I didn't wake up in that era I suppose." He says ruefully, "I was an artist before I could see color the way I do now and I pray to god I never used this shade of yellow and green together in any of my work.”

Natasha hums with curiosity, “You haven’t seen any of your pieces since you woke up?”

“Not besides the portrait that was here that you saw."

"Would you like to?"

She notes the way his shoulders stiffen with interest, his hands pausing in their pursuit of food. "I didn’t think any of my paintings were around anymore…outside of the black and white sketches in the Smithsonian.”

“Anything can be found if one looks hard enough.”

“I’m guessing that means you’ve looked hard enough,” Steve says with narrowed eyes. “All my pieces should be in private collections last I checked.”

“Private is such an ambiguous word, isn’t it?” Natasha hums.

“Generally a locked door is a locked door. Not very ambiguous.”

Natasha feels a curl of smug amusement. Steve’s looking at her with that same icy stare he’d given her in the hospital room now. Suspicious, on guard. It would make a normal woman nervous to be looked at like that by a super soldier who could probably break her in half if he wanted, but then Natasha has never been a normal woman. She’s faced down worse than an annoyed Steve Rogers. Much worse.

“You think that look scares me more than the Hulk did up in the helicarrier?” She says with an amused twinkle in her eye. “Really, Steve, you’ll have to do better than that if you want to scare me.”

Instantly the tension leaves Steve, and he scoffs.

“I don’t want to scare you,” Steve says with a roll of his eyes. He looks almost _fond,_ which is surprising to Natasha. “I’m just annoyed. People can be annoyed at their friends without it meaning they want to attack them, Natasha.”

“Not in my experience,” Natasha says, feeling discomfortingly off balance by his suddenly friendly attitude towards her. She’s used to false faces and hidden meanings, vagueness, and shadow. But there is none of that in Steve. He’s just… _honest._ Disarmingly so. And Natasha isn’t comfortable with disarming.

 _It’s going to get him killed one day,_ Is all she can think, and the sharp pang of regret at the thought takes her by surprise. It’s almost _protective._ She doesn’t feel protective. Not over anyone but Clint anyways.

“Not even Clint?” Steve says, eyeing her.

“Clint’s different,” Natasha says easily. “We understand one another. He knows me.”

“I suppose that’s fair. You certainly know more about me than I do you.” Steve huffs, but then she feels his eyes stop and hover on her face, considering. “But knowing isn't really understanding is it? Is that what you’re trying to do, really, by following me around? Understand me?”

Natasha laughs, feeling strangely caught out. She tilts her head at Steve and finds that she can’t say for sure that she _does_ understand him, not like she thought she did. “It’s no great leap of faith. I told you as much when I first brought you here, didn’t I?”

Steve nods at that. “You said you wanted to know what kind of man you would be letting point your gun. You said you’d been watching me.”

“I was watching Captain America before.” She says with a shake of her head. “Now I’m watching Steve Rogers.”

Steve’s hand goes to his neck, fingering something under the loose button-up shirt he has on. She can appreciate that he hadn’t gone out in those obnoxiously tight t-shirts of his at least. He stands out as it is without drawing more attention to himself and his unnaturally perfect physique. Natasha catches a glimpse of the shine of metal on his fingertips and knows it must be his mother’s ring.

"Are you disappointed?" 

She hums thoughtfully, taking a bite out of her gyro. "I like him better I think. Even if he is terrible at disguises."

Steve chokes out a surprised laugh at that, and it makes Natasha's chest feel vaguely warm with pride. She likes making people laugh more than she likes making people scream, she's found.

“Did you like your shawarma?” Steve asks suddenly, making Natasha blink.

“Yes.” She says, amused at the sudden change in the conversation from serious to small talk. She decides to humor it. “It was…good. And yours?”

“It’s not something we had, before. In the… _past._ ” Steve says quietly. “But I liked it. I’m learning to let myself be more open to the possibility of new things, I think. A new life, a new place, new people…new friends.”

He looks at her, and his hand falls away from the ring hidden beneath his layers of clothes. He seems fond again, and it makes Natasha smile with less precision and more feeling than usual. She realizes she’s comfortable here, in this terribly decorated far too expensive apartment, eating greasy takeout with a man she can’t make sense of half the time. She feels settled, weighted in her own body, _seen_ in a way that she feels only Clint has managed. 

“Are we friends, Steve?” Natasha asks, and only just refrains from making a joke about schoolyard notes being passed under the table, asking her to ‘circle yes or no’ if she wants to be his friend.

“Would you like to be?” He asks, and then, straight forward as always, continues on, “It would be nice, I think, to have someone I can call a friend in this place. I would like to call you a friend, Natasha.”

“Friends usually trust one another.” Natasha points out.

“I trust you,” Steve says, surprising her once more. She’s just about to call him naive when he gives her a little smirk that’s far too sly for his honest face. “I trust you to be yourself, anyways.”

Natasha laughs, “Are you sure you know who that is? Just hours ago you were calling my Nancy, after all.”

Steve simply shrugs, “And now I’m asking you to just be Natasha. And I’ll just be Steve.”

“No masks?”

“No masks.”

Natasha can’t help but smile. Such a naive sweet thought, that her masks so easily discarded. At this point in her life, she isn’t entirely sure it’s possible to go without at least some sort of mask, even if it is just skin deep. And yet…

_“Please, just try.”_

She can hear Clint, in her head, asking her not to give up, asking her to do the right thing. He’d been the first to look at her and not see a mindless killer, a gun to be pointed, and nothing more. He’d been the first to tell her she could be a better person than what they’d made her, what she'd let herself settle into with defeat.

For a moment, sitting across from Steve as he looks at her so hopefully, she falls into the past.

_“Why am I here, Clint,” Natasha asks, staring down at her own bloodied hands. They’re clean, in truth, but in the moment she sees nothing but red._

_“You’re here to relax. To sit and have drinks in a bar with your coworkers and talk about nothing and laugh about stupid shit.” Clint says without hesitating, and it makes her grin sharp and unkind._

_“Coworkers…” She repeats, “Like we just got off from a long day of work in some cubicle doing paperwork, rather than killing foreign agents after sensitive SHIELD tech.”_

_Clint sighs, “Why did you follow me then, Natasha? You tell me. Why are you here?”_

_“I’m here because you’re here,” Natasha says with a flirtatious smile. As usual, Clint just gives her an unimpressed look. He always has been particularly immune to her charms, and really at this point, her flirting was more habit than an actual attempt to coerce the man._

_“You’re here because you want to make up for the hurt you've caused. You’re here because you want to be better. You’re here because you want to be a good person.”_

_Her playful smile drains from her face at the too-honest words, and suddenly the atmosphere between them is serious and tense. Natasha hovers a fingers breadth from Clint, their eyes locked. She feels seen in a way she hasn’t since she left the red room. It’s frightening, to be looked at like that, like all her masks are being seen through as easy as transparent curtains._

_“And how do I do that?” She asks, voice barely heard over the blare of the music from inside the bar that they stand outside of. “Should I start walking old ladies across the street? Helping cats out of trees? Maybe serve food at the downtown homeless center? Will those things make up for all the death on my hands? Will going into this bar and pretending to care about your friends' petty problems make me a good person?”_

_Clint just looks at her with steady sad eyes, and it makes her fist her hands at her side to hide their shaking._

_“What do you want me to be, Clint?” Natasha asks, pleads more like. It'd be so much easier, she thinks, if he'd just tell her what to be. She's good at that, being what people want to see, and she knows Clint would ask her to be something terrible._

_“Yourself, Natasha. Just yourself.”_

_She closes her eyes against a flinch. She thinks she was wrong then, that Clint would never ask her to be anything terrible._

_“I’m not sure I know how.”_

“Me neither. Not anymore.”

Steve's voice startles her back to the present. She blinks as she watches him smile softly at her and realizes that she's said the words aloud.

“Maybe we can figure it out together…how to just be people,” Steve says, and the way he looks at her is filled with a fragile sort of hope.

Natasha takes a breath and eats the last bite of her shawarma gyro. She wants to ask ‘why.’ She wants to press and poke until she finds what ulterior motives he might have for getting into her good graces. She wants to…but she doesn’t. Because she knows, those suspicions of hers are simply ingrained instincts. They aren’t real. They’re just another mask she doesn’t need anymore, at least not here.

“I'll try.” She says finally, and though it's a paltry offering Steve smiles like it's the best thing he's heard all day.

Natasha gives Steve a narrow-eyed look then, faux angrily kicking at his ankle. “How did this conversation become about me? You’re more sneaky than I thought, Rogers.”

His closed-lip smile transforms into a full-on grin then. “That’s high praise coming from you.”

“Please. Don’t let your ego inflate too much, you’re still terrible at disguising yourself. And entirely too predictable.” Natasha scoffs. “I’m honestly surprised the press hadn’t already snuck secret camera’s into that hospital room. It was obvious that you’d show up eventually.”

Steve grimaces, “You were right about them. I should have been more careful with my identity.”

“And now everyone knows Steve Rogers makes up terribly uncreative fake names so he can lie about having left New York and keep saving lives without acknowledgment.” Natasha says with a chuckle and a shrug, “What’s done is done. Fury is handling it.”

“Speaking of predictability, why _haven’t_ they found this place yet?”

“Why do you think?” Natasha says with a pointed eyebrow raise.

“More super-secret spy powers that you won’t explain?” Steve says with a long-suffering sigh that makes Natasha’s lips quirk on one side.

“Hmm, unfortunately, it wasn’t me this time. This required someone with more _legal_ connections. AKA money.” She leans back on the brown-green couch as she watches the confusion on Steve's face turn into pained understanding.

“Tony?” Steve says with a grimace. “Great. Just another reason for him to use to try and get me to live in his gaudy glass tower. Isn’t he off on some road trip with Dr. Banner? How does he even know about—“

“You really think something as mundane as a road trip would stop Tony Stark from knowing what goes on in this city?” Natasha points out. “He’s practically marked New York like a dog does his territory _,_ and now he surely sees the Avengers as part of that.”

“I really don’t like your dog analogy. I’d rather not imagine being peed on thank you.”

“Technically he already has. For all of the Avengers.” Natasha smirks, “The road trip with Bruce. Your phone. The fancy gadgets he gave me and Clint. Not sure if he gave anything to Thor though, since he left so quickly. I’m sure Stark will get around to it eventually though, even if he has to invent interplanetary travel first to do it.”

“I thought I was the captain of this team,” Steve grumbles, looking over at his Stark phone which lays on the table. He glares a bit. “Suppose I’d better expect a phone call at some point asking for a thank you.”

“Yes. And not just from Stark.” Natasha says, “Director Fury will likely call soon as well, though not for a thank you. He’ll be eager to give you an earful for not leaving the city like he told you to.”

At that Steve looks a bit abashed, but it clears quickly to be replaced by that stubborn look that Natasha is beginning to think is a Rogers copyrighted expression.

“How could I leave when I could _help?_ I was needed here, not off on some vacation.”

Natasha finds something deep inside her relaxing at his words, the tension she hadn't even realized she’d still carried in Steve’s presence turning slack like a cut string.

“You’re a fool, Steve Rogers.” She says, but the words are fond rather than exasperated.

“So I’ve been told,” Steve says with an almost practiced air as if he’s responded this exact way a million times before.

“Been called a fool a lot, have you?” She says with amusement. “One would think that might tell you something.”

“It tells me that I have a lot of friends that like to call me a fool.”

Natasha rolls her eyes, “Never mind, I think 'smartass' fits you better.”

Steve just grins, the idiot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Epier is french for 'to keep an eye on' or 'to spy on' lol Let me know how you liked Natasha's POV!


End file.
